FORMER lands minister Jean Kapata says an injunction will have to be obtained against government’s decision to halt developments in Forest 27.

In an interview, Thursday, Kapata said the right procedure was followed when degazzetting and allocating land in the said forest.

“We are not worried. Personally, I was Minister of Lands and Natural Resources and first of all, as minister, land allocation is not under my jurisdiction it is under the jurisdiction of the Commissioner of Lands like I keep telling everyone. Secondly, the right procedure was followed and let them study the procedure because it was followed by the letter. When you look at the beneficiaries, it is across the communities: everybody, the MPs, a few ministers who didn’t have room, people working from parastatals, even just ordinary Zambians were given,” Kapata said.

“They have stopped everything, we are going to have to put an injunction against that. You just don’t stand up and just do anything as though now you are above the law, no! First of all they should have investigated before taking such a major step. They should have investigated to find out what happened than to just to say ‘no, nobody should build’. Who are you to stop people from building, who are you? That’s my question.”

Meanwhile, Kapata said the PF would take advantage of UPND’s failure to deliver their campaign promises as it would boost PF’s chances of bouncing back in 2026.

“The party is still as popular as before I can assure you because we still have 59 seats and the popularity is still there because also our members, even those that voted against us, have seen that it will be very difficult for the UPND to meet its campaign promises. Because all those promises which the UPND promised such as mealie meal, when you ask, the people of Mandevu right now can’t wait to buy a bag of mealie meal at K50, all those promises of the dollar coming back to K5 people are waiting. As long as they don’t deliver, we as PF will take advantage and come 2026, the tables will change,” she said.

“The many jobs that were promised to the youths, we are yet to see the youths getting those jobs. Free education people are crying right now and their hope is diminishing because they did not even touch on free education except that they will give those that are less privileged and that’s exactly what PF did, we gave those who were less privileged. As far as we are concerned we are going to emerge very strong, we are waiting for the recommendation from the postmortem committee and once the postmortem is done, we will follow what it will say and go flat out to make sure the party becomes even stronger than before.”

She said the UPND government needed to beat the PF’s delivery for them to stand a chance of retaining power in 2026.

“Of course they do (believe in the PF), we worked, PF delivered, delivered 100 percent and we are yet to see the new government do that. We want to see some of the roads, especially their members of parliament sung everyday in day out let them do those roads in the rural parts of Zambia, we are waiting for them to do that. They have to beat the PF’s history performance for them to retain their seats in 2026 otherwise they are gone and they will be a one term government. It will be a very big disaster unless I can assure you unless right now they begin to work towards the promises they made and there are so many it is a long list,” said Kapata.