FORMER Zambian Ambassador to Ethiopia Emmanuel Mwamba says the Patriotic Front needs a new leadership and new thinking for it to survive.

And Mwamba says the current infighting is making members lose focus.

Speaking when he featured on the Radio Phoenix’s Let the People Talk programme, Wednesday, Mwamba said PF would die if it adopted the bad habits which made it lose the 2021 elections.

“I think the leadership which is required is the leadership that speaks to national issues. That promotes discourse. That builds this country and that abandons those old habits of insults. We need rebranding, new leadership, new energies, new thinking. This is what we are proposing to bring to the party. The party needs rebranding and major rebranding. The party needs to integrate the new people. The party needed to abandon some policies that made it unpopular. The party needs to accept the mistakes that were made in the past and begin to assure the Zambians that yes, we made a mistake but yes, we have repented on these matters,” Mwamba said.

Mwamba said rebranding the PF party would not be easy but it was necessary because the opposition needed to survive.

“The opposition should not die. PF should not die. So, we have an emphatic approach to the PF and I think that we need a lot of energy to rebuild a party that has just lost an election. We know what happened to UNIP and we know what happened to MMD. We need to recognise those challenges and recognising just the apathy that greets a party that has lost because the people would tell you the party is dead, PF has no future, PF did so many things against us and why are you trying to speak to us about it? So here is a broken relationship and it is not easy to win back the trust of Zambians,” he said.

And Mwamba admitted that the infighting was making party members lose focus.

“The fighting in the party is making us lose focus and one of the reasons the PF lost elections is because of the internal fighting which has been going on since 2011. In fact, you can trace them from 2008. So we cannot continue to have these fights especially when we are in opposition. The values and ideology of the party should keep us together. PF is a good house. It has solid MPs, it has people of good character, of course there are bad elements, but it is a good party,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mwamba said many leaders in the party were quiet because they are waiting for the direction as to when the new leadership would be ushered in.

“Many leaders of the party are quiet. They are waiting for directions even though most of our supporters are quiet. They are asking when and what we are doing about the party. When are we going to have a new leadership? The urgency is on us to recognise that we can’t go on a business as usual path. The ruling party will try to destabilise us, they will try to buy our members, they will preoccupy us with arrests to keep us away from the focus of rebuilding the party,” said Mwamba.