Update: Government adviser says term-limit talk will not distract the State, as Mushimba and a first-time MP add to the debate

Government will not be pulled away from its development programme by the debate on presidential term limits, according to Levy Ngoma, political adviser to President Hakainde Hichilema. Mr Ngoma said "mischievous individuals" are driving the discussion, and that he sees no need for the UPND leadership to comment on talk of removing the two-term limit. His remarks came as the debate widened. Dr Brian Mushimba, president of the Organised People's Party, issued a statement urging President Hichilema, the UPND leadership and MPs to reject any attempt to remove presidential term limits from the Constitution. He said multiparty democracy was won through the sacrifice of citizens who were persecuted, jailed and intimidated, and that term limits guard against power being concentrated in one person or held indefinitely, however popular a sitting president may be. "What was wrong in opposition cannot suddenly become right in government," he said, reminding the UPND that it opposed similar changes when it was out of power. "Two terms are enough," he said, and he told the UPND it will not govern forever. On Tuesday, a first-time MP, Mwanto Kabaso, a former University of Zambia Students' Union president, used his maiden speech to ask the House to discuss term limits. He asked whether Zambia needs elections "for the sake of being called a democratic nation," said the country spends large sums on elections, and argued that the power to decide when a president leaves office should return to the people. Social media users pushed back, pointing out that the Constitution already limits a president to ten years in office, and questioning why a newly elected MP was raising the matter. ## Background On Monday, Dr M'membe wrote to the Law Association of Zambia asking it to convene an extraordinary general meeting to take a public position on term limits and to reconstitute the Oasis Forum, the civil society grouping that stopped a third-term bid in 2001. He argued that any move to remov