Still reeling from a devastating Lusaka mayoral defeat election, UPND should begin the process of charting the direction of their party in the Edgar Igwe Lungu era.
UPND politicians should begin jockeying for control of the party’s future. While the top UPND leadership from councilor to mayoral elections all backed losers, to survive they should start pushing for a serious shift in the party’s policy positions, financial resources towards elections and grassroots organizing to focus more on a populist message that could win back UPND voters who aren’t excited about the candidates imposed on them.
Sampa won not because he is likable but because of the PF brand that Lungu’s grassroots machine has cemented into the imagination of cadre youths. Anyone standing on PF ticket will win. To use the analogy of soccer, PF is topping the ZPL – Zambia Premier League.
Lungu is comfortably in charge of PF and PF have bought into his leadership. Politics like soccer is about winning championship titles, so far Lungu is delivering!
The soul searching should take a more urgent tone, by some party activists and politicians to begin advocating for changes in leadership. For UPND to stay relevant they need to stop attacking Lungu and all he stands for ‘eSwatini’, fire trucks and Mukula, but engage voters in a much more extensive conversation about how the party has failed to win big league elections in metropolitan cities (Chilanga and Lusaka), where tribal politics can’t used as an excuse anymore.
UPND need to find new most visible faces in politics, to make winning elections a far more influential urgency and clearing the way for new blood. When Edgar Igwe Lungu took over PF from after Sata’s death, he retired veterans like Dr. Scott, Kambwili and promoted rank and file members like Mwila, Mumbi goddess Phiri, Jean Kapata and Lusambo, who are the now the face of PF. Most people including myself thought ‘Igwe’was experimenting too much by retiring Sata’s loyalists, but the gamble has paid off. HH-GBM ticket has lost too many elections they should have won to continue being the face of UPND, hoping for a knockout punch in 2021.
Basically, you can say it’s the PF women like Mumbi and Kapata who are sinking the GBM-HH machine in metropolitan cities. Where are the alternative UPND powerful women hitters?
UPND rebrand like Lungu did PF, shakeup the face of the party and adapt or else face extinction and irrelevance during the elections.
If you can’t win elections then quit politics and find something more valuable to do. If you can’t figure out how to win elections how else are you going to figure out how to govern?
By Cecil
Who is this Cecil chap? Everyone complaining about UPND should start by joining the party,contributing to its well being and then they can have the right to complain.
All these elections are rigged. Who doesn’t know that. Registered voters stay away from the elections for the same reason. This Cecil is no other than Chanda from PF
See the arrogance of these UPND chaps to good suggestions. PF have inbuilt advantages like government resources. The fragmented opposition needs to attract each other and fight as one front. Forget the proliferation of all these hopeless small parties as being a sign of a flourishing democracy.
ALL HAS FAILED FOR UPNDEAD.
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A fresh start begins without double h.
Katuka, Kakoma, Nkombo and Mwiimbu are among the expired fossils. UPND should find these gentlemen other roles or they are headed for a disaster in 2021
@ Lungu you don’t have to know who Cecil is or for that matter anyone who advances an opinion or offers some advice on a vexatious issue as to why UPND is seemingly losing ground and grip on its members and sympathizers! Many UPND followers visit these media sites to sample the rich diversity of ideas and debates yet lack appreciation that this here forum one finds some of the most important aspects of concern that the ‘taken-for-granted’ party followers vent their frustrations! Rather than continue being deaf and burying heads in the sand those privy to party leadership structures together with the party’s media team need to seriously take heed to free advice and where necessary grab the bull by the horns! Please learn to understand the groups of people who associate themselves with…
cont…. the party and how in strategy you can use them maximally to get the message out in the respective strata but first define the message! Continue living in ‘taken-for-granted’ party loyalty deception as many become disillusioned and choose to bed with the foes as not to completely lose out on partying! It’s not too late to right the ship! By the way the corruption, fire trucks, vote stealing, load shedding, fuel hikes and the likes messaging is not for the rural people who push ahead without such luxuries thus in messaging discern those that do resonate with the targeted people who you aim to lure!
When dogs are backing in village, it’s better to check, maybe there is a problem.
Talking about UPND is like someone does not feel the pinch of PF. Leave UPND alone and start re-organizing your selves. There are so many opposition political parties but why only UPND? All of you will develop HB like the way we see many of Tonga haters. They will never wipe out the Tonga tribe from Zambia because Tongas are part of Zambia and leave along Zambezi river with the mighty Victoria falls.
PF in Zimbabwe this week marks end of its political carrier. Let us wait and see where someone from Zambia will side with if not Congo and Burundi.
Isn’t UPND the major opposition? You must be proud that people are talking about UPND, You must worry if the case was different. Wake up
Ask HH what value his Deputy has brought to the party? Nothing, this is a classic case of leadership failure on the part of HH. How could he select someone who cannot add value to his party as his deputy. HH times have changede you need someone who is sober and can think strategically with no such record as violent, illiteracy, insolent the list is endless…
Professor Hansoni from a University in South Africa, the author of a letter to the UN on the University Letterhead protesting President Lungu’s “corruption and poor leadership” can bring value to HH’s party! I wish HH could appoint him.
Cecil is just another stu.pid name for a pig that feeds on faeces from PF.
Who do you think you are and what is your business with UPND matters. Mind your PF business and leave us alone mother fcker.
This the insolence and lack critical analysis to suggestions and views people bring on the table that will sink UPND. You thing everyone who suggest something to UPND is PF? get the facts straight. Some of them are voters who have been giving UPND votes from the time the party came into being.
@ Tj:
What critical analysis do you need for the PF violence which is intimidating electorates; People being murdered by PF like Matapa are known, etc. So which misguided critical analysis are you calling. Feel free to do a critical analysis on your ASS if you like but leave the UPND alone. You have no interest in the UPND because you are not even a member – so sod off you rat!
Wina Camubaba!
UPND has been murdering people and someone is Hallucinating making it that it is actually the other way round! Serious mental illnesses!
How you UPND voters are reacting to feedback from this man is how HH rejects all forms of suggestions from within the party and outside. You must not have any desire to win elections. UPND you have an execution problem and it starts from the Hhead.
Rigging…Rigging… Rigging!!!! Continue with those unfounded allegations, for PF its a plus. Come 2021 Rigging will continue. UPND no strategy. Even a mad person can think twice if things are not going well. Continue Dreaming and complaining.
If your party is extremely popular now why do you sound uncomfortable ….why dont you focus on celebrating 24/7……..kkkkkkkkkkkkk
Zambians easily forget HH is the man to put in office and GBM has done alot for UPND nothing wrong with top brass its the problem of voters who choose the stomach than able leadership
The man is extremely generous in his assessment of UPND, because instead of going around the bush, he should have just said outside Southern Province, UPND doesn’t have a winning plan. This time they blamed the loss on apathy. Whose job was it to convince UPND voters to show up and vote for Charmaine in Chilanga and Kangwa in Lusaka? From my sources HH-GBM don’t listen to anyone with different views. Can you compare Masebo to Kapata and Mumbi Phiri when it comes to campaigning? Not at all.
@Olufunke:
If he is that generous, then call him to assess your mother and your grandmother’s rotten and disease infested pu*ssies!
totally I support what the writer has written, except for the change of top leadership.GBM and HH are both very OK,its the ignorance depicted by voters who marginalize the sober majority by choosing any Jim and jack who stands on a finished PF ticket.Normally some voters will have a very lame excuse of failure to vote for UPND which is because HH is Tonga.For example even it was a nonentity like me who stood on the PF ticket, I could have won all the same.therefore our suffering will go beyond 2021 because PF will win again because voters have not learnt any lesson yet.
The fact the opposition like Kambwili, Chipimo, Kalaba, Chishimba, Kabimba, Mulyokela and Mulongoti aren’t that excited to join the HH-GBM team like the opposition formed MMD decades ago, tells me, they don’t believe UPND under HH has a winning strategy. Even the opposition parties have apathy towards UPND. That’s the perception problem HH ought to fix.
The writer is a UPND sympathizer who equally has NO vision but is good at insults. How dare you address men and women leading you using uncalled for adverbs. Secondly, this man has not suggested how he hopes the UPND can re brand. As long as the financier is an individual he shall continue controlling the Yoyo. I suggest you do away with the man who thought be had the vision and has seen the party through a trail of losses, or indeed ask him to listen to the needs of his followers for once. This is no other than HH himself.
Hey you dunderheads Leave UPND alone. HH will fix it. He has a formular. Come 2021 he will unleash it and it will leave all of you spellbound.
Dont ask me how, i dont know. But thats what he tells those who have time to listen to his fake dreams.
Cecil you’re wrong. Katuka says Upnd is reserving all the ballots for 2021. Please leave them alone. But I wonder what would happen to Upnd if Hakainde Hichilema dropped dead. ..not wishing him to die…all of us will at one time die….so what happens since everyone is afraid of him. …GBM? wrong origins. …his succession would spell the end of Upnd.
Putting lipstick on a pig thinking people will not recognise the pig! Tribal gathering.
@Sharon:
Why don’t you put the lipstick on your mother and grandmother’s pu.ssi.es to make them look more tribal!
Please UPND tea, can you rebrand your campaign messages to suit all audiences ASAP
The problem with UPND is very simple. It is a tribal Tonga party ruled by a leader that came in as “only a Tonga”. I speak over 7 Zambia languages and I am not easily pined to a Tribe but I do not understand why Tongas needs to know my tribe before saving me Nshima in Monze or Choma. There is no connection of tribe between a paying customer and the business operator. Even in the USA or UK if you can pay for a service nothing else matters.
Actually, UPND is not as tribal as your mother’s pus.s.ie which has pangas within it!
Just leave HH alone yes they PF can win today but tomorrow the.tables wil turn round.against truely PF has failed largely look at the economy of our country guys let us be serious HH wil fix the economy of our.country come what may.he.wil ascend
Nervous Mumba already provided a good analysis of this. Currently PF has hijacked all our so supposedly public institutions which are supposed to be independent and fair. ECZ being one of them, you cannot expect free and fair election from a weak institution like ECZ. Amos and Lungu himself control that ECZ so even if they loose they can manipulate the results and this was evident in 2016 when they let a Ugandan into the IT room to change the figures. Right now like Nervous put it, it is folly to think you can win an election with these crooks in power, you may have to threaten them with violence or force them out like Mugabe. PF themselves had to threaten Banda to even get a chance to be in power so eventually UPND will have to resolute to violence
Why vote for a party with no ears while in opposition?
UPND have no capabilities that can win them a general election.
They are practicing MANAGEMENT BY HOPE.
Hope that someone will die or hope that something terrible will happen that will turn voters to them.
It’s a waste of time backing perpetual losers.
In my humble opinion I can compare UPND to a stubborn spider that built it’s nest in the barrel of a gun……. they will
never accept any advice….. if you advice you recieve a barrage of insults
Yes, only your grandmother’s ass will take your advice you chimp!