Editorial: Forward, Not Back
Zambians go to the polls tomorrow to make a choice that is, at its heart, a simple one: whether to continue along a path of steady recovery, or to gamble on a return to a past many would rather forget. On balance, the evidence points clearly in one direction. Open Zambia believes President Hakainde Hichilema has earned the opportunity to finish the work he began, and we endorse his re-election.
The case rests not on rhetoric but on tangible results. The introduction of free education has been, by any measure, transformative. Millions of children who might otherwise have been kept home by school fees are now in classrooms, and the burden lifted from struggling families has been real and immediate. The enhanced Constituency Development Fund has pushed resources and decision-making closer to the communities that need them, financing local projects that citizens can see and use. These are not abstractions. They are the kind of changes that alter lives.
Just as important, and too easily taken for granted, is how far the political climate has travelled since 2021. The cadre violence that once made markets and bus stations party fiefdoms has receded. The incidents that have marred this campaign deserve condemnation without reservation, and the President has given it. But they are a fraction of what the country endured five years ago, and they are occurring in an election that international and local observers have been welcomed to watch, not barred from.
None of this is to pretend all is well. The cost of living remains stubbornly high, and for many households the recovery has yet to be felt in the pocket. To his credit, President Hichilema has not hidden from this. But context matters. The economy he inherited in 2021 was in a perilous state, weighed down by unsustainable debt, a collapsing currency and a mining sector on its knees. The difficult and unglamorous work of stabilisation, from debt restructuring to taming inflation, has laid a foundation on which faster progress can now be built. Voters are entitled to ask for more. They are also entitled to recognise how far the country has already travelled.
Against this record, the opposition has offered remarkably little. Throughout the campaign, Mr. Mundubile and his Tonse Alliance have struggled to articulate concrete policies of their own, relying instead on grievance and nostalgia. Most telling has been the message from running mate Makebi Zulu, whose promise to "take Zambia back" will alarm rather than reassure. Many will remember precisely what the country was being taken back from: the economic drift, the debt binge and the lawlessness of the years the Patriotic Front presided over, in which several of these same figures played a central part. A record, in the end, speaks for itself.
Mr. Zulu promises to take Zambia back. We remember where back is. It is the empty treasury, the debt binge, the cadres at the bus station. No Zambian queuing to vote today owes that past a second chance. What this country owes itself is the harder, better thing: to finish what it started. The foundations have been poured. The next five years are for building on them. Go and vote. Vote peacefully. And we urge our readers to go and vote to keep Zambia moving forward. Vote for HH and the UPND.