RAINBOW Party general secretary Wynter Kabimba says his pact with PF ended after the general elections, adding that the former ruling party is now continuing alone as it crumbles.

And Kabimba says PF’s rebranding strategy doesn’t make sense because they are merely moving one person from point A to point B.

Meanwhile, says the UPND’s campaign promises will be their downfall because they are unattainable.

In an interview, Kabimba the indiscipline in PF cost them the elections.

“We had an electoral pact and it was specifically for the elections. So when the elections ended, the pact ended, that marriage ended. So we are back as Rainbow and we want to continue as Rainbow. And PF continues as PF as it crumbles. If you followed my statement very well, it was the decision of the Central Committee of the Rainbow Party and it was a decision taken through a secret ballot. That decision was not surprising because 90 percent, if not more, of Rainbow members are originally members of the PF,” Kabimba said.

“It was therefore normal when we decided that we were not going to participate in these past elections, we had to choose which political party to work with and to support. It was the decision of the central committee that we support the PF. The agreement of that decision is that we thought the PF government after these seven years will do a better job, build on what they have done, learn from their mistakes and help us establish a much more stable society which could translate into social and economic development.”

Kabimba said PF was not ready for the August elections.

“The PF were not ready for this election. They had a lot of in-house issues to deal with. One of them was indiscipline in the party. You cannot win a war with an army of undisciplined soldiers. And we raised these issues in our various discussions with the leadership of the PF that if you don’t deal with this issue of intra-party indiscipline, it is going to cost you in the coming elections. There were divisions running through the ranks and file of the party. A divided party cannot be victorious in a context such as the one that we saw in the last election. The other reason was that PF failed to put across a message which responded to the cries of the people, it was like PF was going west, the people were going east,” he said.

“For example, PF invariably raised their campaign message on infrastructure, that was fantastic. The demand that people had on PF was ‘can you deal with the issues of bread and butter.’ The issue of intra-party indiscipline, it alienated people from the party, fights within the party, cadres showing stashes of money which they could not explain where the money came from and people were going hungry. It is not as if UPND had a better message, no. It was because PF pushed the people away and the people had to find somewhere else to seek solace and the nearest camp they thought they would seek refuge from was UPND.”

And Kabimba said PF’s post-election analysis was wrong and that it needs to call for a general conference.

“I have never seen a rebranding of a product when you are using the same brand. How do you call it branding when you are moving one person from position A to position B? How is that rebranding? PF did not lose the last election because Given Lubinda was not vice-president, PF did not lose the last election because Antonio Mwanza was not national chairperson for youths. Their post-election analysis is wrong,” Kabimba said.

“When you call it rebranding by shifting the same people, you are actually saying ‘this is why we lost the elections’ but you are putting the same people that were running the elections. If they are not careful, the grassroots will lose faith in the top leadership. What PF should do if it wants to survive is to call for an extraordinary general conference and consult the rank and file of the party. To make these appointments at the top to please one another is not going to save the life of the party.”

Meanwhile, Kabimba said most of the UPND campaign promises were unattainable.

“The UPND campaign message was hollow. Most of those things are unattainable and I want to see a UPND government attain those campaign promises which I think will be their waterloo. That is what will bring down the UPND because they are extremely academic in their promises and they forget that people in Kalingalinga do a lot of listening. So they will soon realize there is no free education, they will soon realize that they will remain unemployed. It is not attainable for HH to give free education to the Zambians from grade one to university, that is not possible. There are no resources to allow him to do that. It is not possible for HH to employ all the youths on the streets today, that is unattainable,” he said.

“Most of these promises are made to youths and to the parents of these youths. I was reading his inaugural speech, there is nothing new that he is telling. He is going to increase investment in the energy sector, that is what PF was doing. The whole speech fails to answer the question of how are you going to do it and when are you going to do it. The same youths that came out to vote in great numbers, will turn out again in 2026 and say ‘I am not employed up to now, for five years.’”

Kabimba said it was merely UPND’s turn to eat.

“I am reading a book by Michela Wrong titled ‘It Is Our Turn To Eat’ so this is the UPND’s turn to eat. Not that they will do something that we will say ‘wow’. The cadres that they were talking about under PF, do you know that they are still in markets and bus stations sharing money with council officials? The only party that can bring discipline in the country and in the party is the Rainbow Party because we are serious,” said Kabimba.

In June this year, Kabimba’s Rainbow Party and the Patriotic Front signed a Memorandum of Understanding for purposes of working together to win the August general elections.

Rainbow Party deputy secretary general Robert Chikwetele said the party decided to partner with PF as a change of government could spell doom and disaster for the country.