DOES ZAMBIA STOPS BEING A DEMOCRACY IF HH DECIDES TO GO FOR A THIRD TERM?

DOES ZAMBIA STOPS BEING A DEMOCRACY IF HH DECIDES TO GO FOR A THIRD TERM?
I am not saying that HH wishes to run for a 3rd term, this is just appreciating academia.

The first question though should be, what is democracy according to Zambia? Is it fully attainable? Was it attained under KK? FTJ? Mwanawasa? RB? M.C. Sata, or ECL? I remember FTJ calling Mwanawa’s fight against corruption a political “witch hunt”. It’s on record.

Anyway, Is there a term limit in the definition of democracy? How did the presidential term came about? How old and matured is our democracy? Can we compare the democracy of Zambia, a country born only in 1964 to the democracy of USA which got its independence in 1776? How did we end up having political parties/partisan politics? How does region, policy direction or tribe influence politics?

As you are brainstorming, let’s look at how presidential terms came about in the USA and generally.

The first presidential election in the United States was held in 1788.

George Washington – the commander of the Continental Army in the American Revolution – had recently announced his return from retirement, whereupon he agreed to run for President. As the Constitution was still being ratified by the states, the inner workings of the new American government were not completely defined. Because of this, Washington did not select a running mate, as such a concept did not yet exist.

The tallied votes determined that Washington had unanimously won the election with a total of 69 electoral votes. John Adams – a fellow Founding Father who served as an American diplomat to Europe in the Revolution – earned the second-highest number of votes, making him the nation’s first vice president.

Washington and Adams were both re-elected into their respective offices in the 1792 election, after which they stepped down when their second terms were completed.

One of the major long-term effects of the Washington-Adams presidency was the unofficial creation of the “two-term tradition,” that being where a sitting president was expected to willingly step down after two full terms, even though no such law mandating such was enacted until the Twenty-second Amendment in 1951.

America’s first presidential administration was also notable for not having any explicit partisan affiliations. Although the 1790s saw the rise of the first two major political parties in the United States, Washington identified himself as politically-independent, going so far as to condemn partisanship in his 1796 “Farewell Address.”

In spite of his disapproval of political parties, the very next presidential election would see the rise of them to national prominence, brought about in part by his own Vice President, Adams.

John Adams ran for president in the 1796 election against Thomas Jefferson, a fellow Founding Father who co-authored the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Keeping with his previous political affiliation, Adams ran on the Federalist Party’s platform. From 1788 to 1801, the Federalists were the dominant political party in the United States. Led by major political figures such as John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, their supporters were largely centered among industrialized groups, the merchant class, and banking institutions in the New England states.

Their platform advocated for a strong, centralized federal government that would form economic alliances with the Kingdom of Great Britain.

During the Washington-Adams administration, the Federalist Party defended Hamilton’s economic policies. As the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton supported having the federal government pay off the states’ debts, raising money through securities bonds, giving American businesses government subsidies, and imposing protectionist tariffs on imported goods from abroad. Opposing Adams in the election was Jefferson, running for president with the Democratic-Republican Party. Otherwise known as the Jeffersonian Republican Party, it was the first opposition party in the United States.
Under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe, the party was largely supported by middle class artisans, farmers, merchants, and wealthy slave owners in the southern states. Their platform was highly critical of the positions held by the Federalists.

I want you to create your own conclusion, but as you do so: the truth is that the democracy for USA took 250years of perfection to be where it is today. Their two party political system is more civilized than our Zambian multiparty democracy which is possibly in need of more defining and refining. If anything, our constitution needs continuous improvements. We can also see that if we were to remove tribe from Zambian politics: people generally vote according to their needs in a particular region-the tribalism topic in Zambia is more louder than it is practiced.

Shipungu | September 14, 2026