President Hakainde Hichilema is facing calls to use Friday’s official opening of the Fourteenth National Assembly to state plainly where he stands on removing presidential term limits. Voices from academia, civil society and the opposition warn that the push by some in the ruling camp threatens to deepen post-election divisions.

Historian Dr Euston Chiputa said the presidential address at the opening of the First Session gives the Head of State a chance to ease post-election tension and reaffirm his commitment to constitutionalism. He wants the President to answer, unequivocally, the growing calls by United Party for National Development (UPND) cadres and the ruling party’s affiliates for term limits to be removed from the Constitution.

Dr Chiputa, a former University of Zambia (UNZA) lecturer, rejected the ruling party’s position that the country has nothing to reconcile. “Much as we hear UPND say there’s nothing to reconcile about, there is no tension in the country,” he said. “In my view, there is a need for the President to address this matter seriously and face up to it rather than burying his head in the sand that all is well.”

He tied reconciliation directly to the fate of opposition leaders held on treason and sedition charges, saying the President should show his commitment to dialogue by releasing them. “It is quite challenging to urge people to move on while others are in detention,” Dr Chiputa said. “This is his opportunity to do things correctly. He needs a fresh start, and that can only be done if he releases those incarcerated on trumped-up sedition and treason charges.”

The historian also linked national unity to the Government’s economic programme. Rallying citizens behind the Grow Zambia Agenda, he said, would be extremely difficult while the nation remains fractured.

“It is extremely difficult to bring all citizens together to support a national cause when others are grieving because they lost a loved one, others are imprisoned, yet many others are hurting,” he said. The achievements the Government seeks under the agenda, he added, would require the participation of all citizens, including the detained opposition leaders.

Dr Chiputa noted that the President had already hinted at dialogue during the Isamu Lya Moomba traditional ceremony in Bweengwa, Monze, on Sunday, suggesting a conciliatory approach. He pointed to a model the Government has used before. “He can also use the route used in the out-of-court settlement of the Konkola Copper Mines legal matters,” he said.

A sharper warning came from Community Action Against Corruption (CAAC). Its chief executive officer, Mr Brightone Tembo, told MPs pushing for removal of the presidential term limit to find other ways of showing loyalty to the President than championing what he called unconstitutional provisions.

“MPs need to find other means of expressing loyalty to the Republican President, instead of championing the agenda that can end up polarising the nation,” Mr Tembo said.

He described the third-term push as a “brought in dead” agenda, saying Zambians would not accept a return to a colonial-era, one-party state type of government. Those who backed what he termed a dictatorial provision, he warned, would be punished by the people.

Mr Tembo stressed that no formal constitutional amendment proposal concerning the two-term limit is currently before the nation. He said CAAC was not calling for anyone to be silenced or denied the right to an opinion, but urged restraint in repeatedly amplifying a politically sensitive proposal.

He extended that caution to the press, asking media houses and online platforms to separate reporting on individual opinions from deliberately promoting them. “The media must remain a platform for informing citizens, not a vehicle for manufacturing momentum around constitutional changes,” he said. “The country should therefore approach this subject with constitutional maturity, sobriety and extreme caution.”

Continued prominence for the term limits question, Mr Tembo said, risks pulling national attention away from economic recovery, job creation, corruption, public accountability, poverty reduction, service delivery and the strengthening of democratic institutions.

Columnist Dr Lawrence Mwelwa took the matter in a more provocative direction. Noting that some voices within the UPND have entertained the idea of removing term limits so that the President can stay beyond the current constitutional limit, he wrote that if the goal is a president for life, Zambia should be honest about it.

His proposal, which he described as deliberately provocative, was to make the President King, let his son inherit the throne and have Parliament produce Prime Ministers to run the government. “A President occupies State House temporarily,” Dr Mwelwa wrote. “The Constitution belongs to the people permanently.”

Dr Mwelwa was careful to say his concern was not that Mr Hichilema is uniquely dangerous, but the precedent. If the limit is lifted for one president considered exceptional, he wrote, a successor could make the same claim. “Once we start writing constitutions for individuals, we stop building republics.”

The President’s own past statements have become the reference point for those urging him to speak. Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) figure Mr Antonio Mwanza said the Head of State had been unequivocal in previous public statements that he supports neither a third term nor the removal of term limits, and urged him to make that position clear again now.

Mr Hichilema will deliver the address on Friday when he officially opens the First Session of the Fourteenth National Assembly.

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