ECZ suspends counting and announcement of election results nationwide

VOTE BRIEF | ECZ Freezes Vote Count As Mundubile Claims Victory

Zambia's election has entered its most delicate phase yet. The Electoral Commission of Zambia has suspended counting and the announcement of results nationwide, while opposition presidential candidate Brian Mundubile says his Parallel Voter Tabulation shows he has won the election.

ECZ Chairperson Mwangala Zaloumis said the decision followed reports of violence during counting and announcements in some districts, including attacks targeting poll staff and alleged theft of marked ballot papers

"The Commission has with immediate effect suspended the counting and announcement of results throughout the country," ECZ said. The suspension will be reviewed within 24 hours.

Mundubile responded with a declaration of his own. "According to the results received and compiled through our Parallel Voter Tabulation… our tabulation indicates that we have won this election," he said.

He demanded publication and verification of results, arguing any difference between polling-station records and the eventual national tally should be resolved through transparency.

That claim remains a Tonse Alliance position, not an official election result. ECZ has not declared a winner, and The People's Brief has not independently seen a complete national PVT dataset capable of verifying Mundubile's assertion.

Mundubile has separately raised allegations involving ballot boxes, Gen 20 forms and security personnel in Mufulira, Matero, Chawama, Northern and North-Western provinces. These are serious claims, but they remain allegations at this stage. They should not be reported as established fact without documentary evidence or responses from ECZ and the relevant security institutions.

The suspension also comes against a difficult information environment. Since counting began, competing political networks and social-media pages have circulated victory claims, incomplete tallies and conflicting parliamentary results.

Among them have been claims suggesting the opposition alliance swept all parliamentary seats on the Copperbelt and across Lusaka.

Available information does not support such sweeping claims. The alliance did not field parliamentary candidates in every constituency in those areas, while emerging constituency results show a more fragmented parliamentary picture.

This distinction matters. Signed Gen 20 forms from individual polling stations can provide credible evidence of what happened at those stations. They do not, individually, establish a constituency result — much less a national presidential outcome.

Parallel tabulation can provide an important independent check, but its credibility depends on coverage, completeness and the ability to reconcile its figures against the official electoral record.

The country is therefore dealing with two contests at once: the count itself and the battle over what Zambians believe about the count. Speed matters, but verification matters more. A viral result is not automatically a verified result. A party declaration is not an ECZ declaration.

For The People's Brief, our approach remains unchanged. We will report signed polling-station records where their provenance can be established, track constituency and parliamentary outcomes as they become verifiable, distinguish political claims from confirmed results, and correct information when stronger evidence emerges. Trust the process of verification, not the speed of social media.

For now, the central fact is simple: Zambia has no officially declared presidential winner. Mundubile says his internal tabulation shows victory. ECZ has temporarily halted the results process because of security concerns.

What happens when the Commission reviews the suspension will determine the next stage of an election whose political contest has now moved from the ballot box to the integrity and transparency of the count.

-The People's Brief | Ollus R. Ndomu