{"id":5168,"date":"2021-08-29T16:52:53","date_gmt":"2021-08-29T16:52:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zambia\/all-news\/im-not-available-to-contest-the-2026-presidential-elections-lungu"},"modified":"2021-08-29T17:06:31","modified_gmt":"2021-08-29T17:06:31","slug":"im-not-available-to-contest-the-2026-presidential-elections-lungu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zambia\/all-news\/im-not-available-to-contest-the-2026-presidential-elections-lungu","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m not available to contest the 2026 Presidential Elections-Lungu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/\">Africa-Press<\/a> &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zambia\">Zambia<\/a>. <\/strong><\/span>Former president Edgar Lungu has said that he is not available to contest the 2026 General election. speaking to journalists shortly after a Church service at the United Church of Zambia all saints congregation in Lusaka, Mr. Lungu said that those advising him to continue as Patriotic Front (PF) President and contest 2026 are wasting their time because he will not.<\/p>\n<p>President Lungu said that he lost the August 12, 2021 election and that he will focus on attending to other issues. President Lungu since has called on the church to pray for the recently elected UPND government to deliver their campaign promises, adding that time for campaigns is over and that the UPND Government needs to be given space to deliver on their promises.<\/p>\n<p>The sixth President added that it is cardinal for the government of the day to work with the church because the church plays an important role in the governance of the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Zambia. Former president Edgar Lungu has said that he is not available to contest the 2026 General election. speaking to journalists shortly after a Church service at the United Church of Zambia all saints congregation in Lusaka, Mr. Lungu said that those advising him to continue as Patriotic Front (PF) President and contest [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":5167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7,8,12,16],"tags":[234,235,239,2153,233],"class_list":["post-5168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-head-lines","category-homepage-english","category-policy","category-twitter","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-zambia","tag-edgar-lungu","tag-governance","tag-zambia"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>I\u2019m not available to contest the 2026 Presidential Elections-Lungu - 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