🇿🇲 INSIGHT | Who Wants to Change the Constitution, and Why Now? Zambia has barely finished one constitutional amendment process and another sensitive proposition is already entering public debate. Project 2090, launched in Mongu, wants the two-term presidential limit removed, arguing MPs and councillors can repeatedly seek office while recent constitutional changes removed equivalent limits […]

🇿🇲 INSIGHT | Who Wants to Change the Constitution, and Why Now?

Zambia has barely finished one constitutional amendment process and another sensitive proposition is already entering public debate. Project 2090, launched in Mongu, wants the two-term presidential limit removed, arguing MPs and councillors can repeatedly seek office while recent constitutional changes removed equivalent limits for mayors and council chairpersons. UPND Deputy Media Director Sikwindi Situla says the ruling party “neither endorses nor rejects” the proposal and respects the right of citizens to debate it. Fair enough. But why now? Why did Project 2090 not emerge before President Hakainde Hichilema secured his second mandate, and why was presidential tenure absent when Bill 7 was being developed?

The geography matters too. Project 2090 has started in Western Province, one of UPND’s strongest political regions. Its organisers say the campaign is non-partisan, and there is no evidence before the public proving it belongs to UPND. But change the circumstances. Suppose Brian Mundubile, whose political roots are firmly associated with PF but who contested the 2026 presidency under NRPUP, had won. Suppose residents of Luapula, historically one of PF’s strongest regions, immediately launched a campaign to remove presidential term limits. Would UPND simply say it “neither endorses nor rejects” the proposal? Zambia’s politics has long carried strong regional voting patterns. We gain nothing by pretending otherwise.

History should make everyone cautious. Zambia introduced presidential term limits with the return to multiparty democracy in 1991. Within a decade, President Frederick Chiluba’s supporters were pushing for a third term. Churches, civil society, opposition parties and figures within MMD resisted, while 22 senior MMD figures broke ranks. Years later, Guy Scott recalled in Parliament how the Oasis Forum and churches helped stop what he called the “Third Term Bid.” Chiluba eventually left State House. The restraint remained. Elections decide who governs today. Term limits decide how long one individual may continue seeking the country’s most powerful office.

Then came 2016 and another lesson. By the time Edgar Lungu signed the amended Constitution on 5 January 2016, Zambia had already experienced elections with pronounced regional voting patterns. UPND was routinely portrayed by opponents as a regional party, historically strongest in Southern Province and increasingly competitive in Western and North-Western provinces, while PF had strongholds elsewhere. The introduction of 50-percent-plus-one meant winning a collection of strongholds was no longer enough. A presidential candidate needed a national majority. There was a democratic argument behind this: in a diverse country, a President should command support broad enough to cross 50 percent nationally. But there was politics too. PF knew its electoral map and knew UPND’s. Those pushing the new arrangement could reasonably calculate how it might strengthen their own position while making the route to State House harder for Hakainde Hichilema whose support was seen as heavily concentrated in particular regions.

Politicians do not stop calculating political advantage simply because they are writing laws.

The irony arrived only seven months later. Lungu became the first President required to win under the new threshold, and he almost failed to cross it. The Electoral Commission recorded 1,860,877 votes for Lungu against 1,760,347 for Hichilema, putting Lungu at 50.35 percent. He cleared exactly 50 percent of valid votes by only 13,022 votes. After the election, Lungu himself acknowledged how tight the national arithmetic had become, saying: “If I didn’t get those 252 votes in Dundumwezi, I wouldn’t have gotten 50% + 1.” Suddenly, even votes from one of PF’s weakest areas mattered.

Five years later, the lesson became even clearer. In 2021, Hichilema received 2,852,348 votes against Lungu’s 1,870,780. The opposition party once attacked for being too regionally concentrated to command a national majority had expanded its coalition and crossed the same constitutional threshold comfortably. PF had been in Government when the rule was enacted. It could not control who would eventually benefit from it. A constitutional rule does not know who wrote it.

UPND should think carefully about this history. Suppose presidential term limits were removed during Hichilema’s second term. UPND might have the political strength to support such a change, but it cannot write the result of the 2031 election into the Constitution. What if an opposition movement, including politicians who reorganised after PF lost power, wins State House? What if the new President then seeks a third, fourth or fifth term under the very constitutional arrangement created while UPND governed? Would UPND still defend unlimited presidential tenure from the opposition benches? The law does not follow a defeated party into opposition. It stays with whoever inherits the presidency.

UPND knows what constitutional politics looks like from the other side. During the Bill 10 battle in July 2020, Jack Mwiimbu told Parliament: “As the United Party for National Development, we are very consistent. We have been wanting a good Constitution.” He went further: “We are not going to support the Constitution of Zambia (Amendment) Bill No. 10 of 2019.” UPND withheld its support and Bill 10 failed to obtain the required constitutional majority. The party demanded scrutiny when PF held power. The same principle should survive the journey from opposition to Government.

Project 2090’s argument must also stand on substance. A President is not simply an MP with a bigger constituency. MPs legislate and represent constituencies. Councillors exercise local authority. The President heads the Executive and exercises extensive powers across the state. Different offices can therefore carry different constitutional restraints. If removing term limits for mayors created an inconsistency, why correct it by weakening the presidential safeguard instead of asking whether removing mayoral limits was wise? More importantly, what national problem has the presidential two-term limit created?

There is also the question of priorities. Zambia has spent decades reviewing, rewriting and fighting over its Constitution: commissions, drafts, the 2016 amendments, a referendum, Bill 10, Bill 7 and now another conversation about presidential tenure. Constitutional reform can be necessary. But Zambia also needs electricity, productive agriculture, investment, affordable capital, functioning hospitals, mineral value addition, manufacturing, businesses, jobs and higher household incomes.

Government itself says its second term should move Zambia from stabilisation towards production and growth. At what point does Zambia stop continuously governing the Constitution and start governing under it?

Project 2090 has every right to campaign. UPND has every right to listen. Its opponents have every right to resist. But Zambia should ask: Why now? Why after Hichilema secured his second mandate? Why was this absent from Bill 7? Why has the campaign emerged from a UPND stronghold? Would the same argument be welcomed if it came from Luapula under an opposition President? Kenneth Kaunda left power. MMD left. PF left. UPND will one day leave too.

This is not a prediction about 2031. It is the ordinary cycle of democratic politics. Never give your own President a constitutional advantage you would fear in the hands of your opponent. Power changes hands. The law stays behind.

INSIGHT | Beyond the headline. We examine the forces, choices and consequences shaping the story.

– The People’s Brief  | Ollus R. Ndomu