Fred M’membe scheduled to appear before Zambia Police HQ today at 09:00hrs

Socialist Party president and People’s Pact 2026 presidential candidate Fred M’membe is scheduled to appear before Zambia Police Headquarters today at 09:00hrs in connection with remarks he made demanding the burial of Zambia’s Sixth President, Dr Edgar Chagwa Lungu.

M’membe confirmed that he had been summoned over a public statement in which he criticised the continued delay in laying the former Head of State to rest. Dr Lungu’s remains have been in a mortuary for nine months amid an unresolved dispute involving the State and members of his family, a matter that has already passed through court proceedings initiated by the government.

“I’ve been called there by the police in connection with a statement I made demanding the burial,” M’membe said ahead of his scheduled appearance.

In the statement that drew the attention of law enforcement authorities, M’membe argued that Lungu’s status as a former president required national dignity beyond partisan considerations.

“Edgar is not an ordinary citizen, he’s our former president, whether we like him or not,” he said.

He maintained that burial arrangements should rest with the family, describing the prolonged stay of the former president’s remains in a mortuary as unacceptable.

“But his body belongs to his family. He has been lying in the mortuary, frozen in a fridge for nine months now,” he said.

M’membe directly criticised President Hakainde Hichilema, questioning the State’s role in the handling of the burial and asking why the President would seek to preside over funeral arrangements for a predecessor with whom he had a strained political relationship.

The burial of Dr Lungu has become one of the most politically sensitive issues in recent months, drawing strong reactions across the political spectrum and placing questions of constitutional authority, executive discretion and family rights under national scrutiny. Police have not publicly detailed the specific nature of the inquiry for which M’membe has been summoned.

However, the police summons comes at a time when M’membe has also placed himself at the centre of another contentious national discussion: the integrity of the 2026 general election.

In a separate and strongly worded statement M’membe questioned the provisional voters’ roll released by the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ). He focused on what he described as a dramatic increase of 1.8 million registered voters within a single electoral cycle.

“Zambians are not fools. They can count. They can compare. And they can detect when arithmetic begins to insult common sense,” M’membe said.

He argued that a 26 per cent growth in voter registration over five years, in a country with an average annual population growth of about 3.5 per cent, required comprehensive explanation.

“An increase of 1.8 million voters in one electoral cycle is not a minor administrative adjustment. It is a political event. It is a development that demands transparency at the highest level,” he said.

M’membe posed a series of questions to the Commission, including the source of the additional registrations, district-by-district comparisons with the previous roll, age distribution data, records of deceased voters removed from the system, and independent forensic verification of biometric integrity.

“Democracy does not survive on assurances. It survives on demonstrable credibility,” he said, adding that independence must be demonstrated through data rather than declarations.

He cautioned that public trust, once eroded, is difficult to restore and warned that perceptions of institutional bias could undermine the legitimacy of the electoral outcome even before voting begins.

“If citizens enter the 2026 election believing that the playing field is already tilted, the legitimacy of the outcome will be contested before the first ballot is cast,” he said.

The ECZ has yet to issue a detailed public breakdown addressing the specific concerns raised in his statement.

M’membe’s scheduled appearance before police over his burial remarks now unfolds against this broader backdrop of mounting political tension. With the 2026 general election approaching and unresolved questions surrounding both the burial of a former president and the composition of the voters’ roll, today’s developments place him squarely at the intersection of two of the country’s most charged national debates.