Speaker danced away Parliament’s credibility – Prof Lumina
By Charles Chisala
SPEAKER of the National Assembly Nelly Mutti has lowered the dignity of the House by dancing in celebration of the passing of Bill 7 last week, constitutional and international human rights law expert Professor Cephas Lumina has said.
Last Monday, Mutti shocked the country and the entire world when she left her seat and danced around the chamber while flashing the United Party for National Development (UPND) symbol with both hands to express her happiness with the bill’s success, which has birthed the Constitution Amendment Act No. 13 of 2025.
In an expert article accessed by The Mast, Prof Lumina strongly condemned Mutti’s conduct as a true manifestation of her lack of neutrality in the National Assembly as an umpire.
“When the Speaker of the National Assembly celebrates the passage of a deeply contested and polarising constitutional amendment by dancing on the floor of the House, she is not merely expressing personal joy. She is engaging in conduct that objectively lowers the dignity of the Assembly and exposes it to ridicule in the eyes of the public,” he said.
“The Standing Orders do not ask whether such conduct was “well-intentioned”. They ask whether it upheld the dignity of Parliament. On any honest assessment, it did not.”
Prof Lumina said Mutti’s partisan dance mattered “so much” because it directly affected the credibility of the National Assembly of Zambia at home and in the eyes of the international community.
He dismissed feeble attempts by Mutti’s supporters to defend her behaviour.
“Supporters of the Speaker have attempted to downplay the incident. ‘It was just a dance,’ they say. ‘People are overreacting.’ But Zambians are not reacting to rhythm. They are reacting to context,” Prof Lumina said.
He said Bill 7 was not an ordinary piece of legislation but a constitutional amendment bill that had already divided the nation, provoked litigation and attracted sustained criticism from civil society, legal bodies, churches and opposition parties.
“For the Speaker to celebrate its passage inside the Chamber was to send an unmistakable signal: this was not a neutral procedural outcome; it was a political victory. And the Speaker was claiming it as her own. That signal undermines every assurance of fairness she has offered before and will offer again,” Prof Lumina said.
He said Mutti’s open display of her partisan bias represented a pattern, not a moment.
The December 15, 2025 spectacle had not emerge in isolation but sat at the end of a long and troubling pattern of conduct that had gradually eroded confidence in the Speaker’s neutrality.
Prof Lumina said Mutti had damaged Zambia’s international image because the country did not operate in a democratic vacuum but its Parliament was part of a global community of legislatures, and she occupied not just a national office, but a global leadership role.
“Her conduct therefore undermines not only confidence in our National Assembly, but the credibility of the very norms she is entrusted to uphold and promote at continental and global level. It places Zambia in the paradoxical position of exporting democratic standards while visibly violating them domestically. This is not superficial damage. It is reputational, institutional and enduring,” Prof Lumina said.
Mutti has come under massive public condemnation and ridicule for leading members of Parliament and Cabinet ministers in celebrating the success of the Executive’s Bill 7, which is now law after President Hakainde Hichilema hastily signed it.
