The Law Never Forgets Who Abused It

The Law Never Forgets Who Abused It

By Amb Emmanuel Mwamba

The passage of Constitution Amendment Bill No. 7 will be remembered not only for what it changed in law, but for how it was carried through Parliament and the signals that moment sent to the nation.

At third reading, the Bill secured 135 votes, the exact two thirds majority required by the Constitution. In formal terms, the arithmetic was impeccable. In democratic terms, the aftermath exposed a deeper fracture between legality and legitimacy that numbers alone cannot repair.

What unsettled the country most was not simply the vote, but the conduct surrounding it. Images and accounts circulated of the Speaker appearing to celebrate the Bill’s passage. That moment, brief as it was, has assumed outsized significance. In parliamentary democracies, the presiding officer is the referee, not a player. Neutrality is not ceremonial, it is foundational. A referee who celebrates a goal destroys confidence in the match itself.

There are few, if any, comparable scenes in established parliamentary systems worldwide. Speakers do not cheer outcomes. They announce them, record them, and move on. Celebration from the chair collapses the wall between arbiter and participant. Once that wall falls, trust in process falls with it.

A satirical post by Nkana Member of Parliament Binwell Mpundu captured this sentiment with uncomfortable precision. His analogy of a referee celebrating a goal resonated because it spoke to something widely felt but rarely articulated so bluntly: that institutional restraint is slipping, and with it the balance that sustains constitutional order.

Bill 7 did not arrive in a vacuum. From the outset, it attracted warnings from civil society, including the Oasis Forum, that its substance and timing raised serious governance concerns. Opposition parties, often fragmented, closed ranks in rejection. Public discourse, from formal statements to informal conversations, reflected suspicion rather than confidence.

Ahead of the vote, opposition presidential hopeful Brian Mundubile spoke of “speculation abounding” around the process. The phrase was careful, but the underlying concern was not. Allegations of inducement and pressure circulated widely, particularly as unexpected voting patterns emerged. No proof was tabled in Parliament, but neither were the doubts convincingly addressed. Silence, in such moments, is not neutral. It feeds mistrust.

The deeper issue is structural. Bill 7 has been defended as reform, yet critics argue it enables consolidation. A Parliament whose size and composition can be adjusted to secure outcomes risks becoming an extension of executive will rather than a check upon it. When numbers are engineered to guarantee passage, debate becomes performance, not persuasion.

This is where today’s celebration may become tomorrow’s reckoning. Legal observers are already noting that actions taken in open defiance of Constitutional Court guidance, or in ways that undermine institutional independence, do not vanish with time. They accumulate. The same legal frameworks now being promoted as tools of reform, including delimitation processes, may one day operate in reverse. Immunity is not permanent. What shields authority today can later strip it.

History across Africa offers a cautionary record. Power is rarely seized in one dramatic moment. It is gathered incrementally, amendment by amendment, vote by vote, under assurances that nothing fundamental will change. By the time consequences arrive, the architects often insist they acted lawfully. Lawful, perhaps. But lawfulness does not erase accountability.

When leaders declare that the people have spoken, the essential question follows naturally: through which institutions, under what conditions, and with what safeguards? Democracy is not sustained by tallies alone. It rests on restraint, neutrality, and respect for limits, especially by those who preside over the process.

Zambia now stands at a difficult junction. One path preserves democratic language while hollowing out democratic substance. The other insists that institutions matter, that referees remain referees, and that power submits to law rather than bending it.

The law has a long memory. It tolerates abuse in silence, sometimes for years. But when it returns, it does so without celebration.

Those who applaud today would do well to remember that tomorrow, the same law they stretched may be waiting to answer back.