Introduction Tinenenji Banda, O’Brien Kaaba, Marja Hinfelaar, and Muna Ndulo Overall, the 2016 elections represent a troubling departure from Zambia’s recent history of democratic governance. In this highly polarized and di- visive environment, it is incumbent upon Zambia’s authorities and politi- cal leaders from all parties to play a constructive role to strengthen the country’s democratic institutions, lessen tensions, address divisions, and prevent post-electoral violence. Carter Centre, 2016 Zambia has experienced an intense period of political competition in the last decade. This was largely due to the deaths of two presidents while in office, namely Levy Mwanawasa in 2008 and Michael Sata in 2014. Their deaths in of- fice triggered two presidential by-elections in 2008 and 2015 respectively, in addition to the regular election cycles of 2011 and 2016. This has meant that in the decade between 2006 and 2016, Zambia has held five elections – an average of one every two years. This has left the country’s politics in almost constant electoral mode. While the 2011 elections were regarded as a moment of demo- cratic consolidation, signs of intolerance of opposition leaders and the lack of a level playing field had already reared their heads. Since the controversial Au- gust 2016 election, which President Edgar Lungu won by a razor-thin majority and which the defeated opposition leader, Hakainde Hichilema, petitioned, Zambia has witnessed increased authoritarianism and the democratic space for opposition parties, civil society and media has shrunk (V-Democracy, 2018). Arguably, Zambia was never a truly liberal democracy. The transition from a one-party state into a multi-party democracy in 1991 failed to deliver substan- tial constitutional reforms. It did not challenge or alter executive power, com- monly used as an instrument for the exclusion of political opponents and to reward supporters through patronage. The President remains the key decision- maker and exercises power and influence over all key institutions in the coun- try, including the legislature and judiciary. Crucially, there remains no effective check on the actions or powers of the president, usually resulting in a lack of transparency and accountability. This has also meant that the state of Zambia’s governance is often a reflection of the personality and leadership style of the sitting president. This idiosyncrasy helps to explain Zambia’s undulating © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004430440_00� <UN> 2 Banda, Kaaba, Hinfelaar and Ndulo political trajectory – neither linear from autocracy to democracy, nor an out- right slide into brute authoritarianism. Despite recognizing the excessiveness of presidential powers in the Zambi- an constitution, various constitutional reform measures have fallen short of reducing them. The latest moment of constitutional reform resulted in the 2016 Constitution of Zambia (Amendment) Act number 2. But other than es- tablishing the Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court and introducing some changes in the rules for electing the president and setting the election date, the new law did little to reduce presidential powers. For example, the President continues to appoint all judges, including those of the Constitution- al and Supreme Courts, makes all senior government appointments and has power to create new ministries, provinces and districts. The lack of democratic consolidation is therefore partially due to the incomplete constitutional re- forms that have further entrenched the central nature of executive power in Zambia. Beyond the country’s contested elections, there is also a lack of insti- tutional development and independence, which would ensure ‘democracy’s viability and sustainability’. (Ndulo and Gazibo, 2016). 1 Background In order to understand the current dynamics of Zambia’s democracy and to understand what was specific about the 2015/2016 election experience, we will provide a historical background to the Third Republic, when multi-party elec- tions were re-introduced after a long period of one-party rule (1973–1990). Multiparty elections were held in 1991 and Frederick Chiluba, former president of the Zambia Congress of Trade Unions (zctu), was elected as the President of the Republic. Though Kaunda had been forced to introduce structural ad- justment programmes, it was under Chiluba that the large-scale privatization, which fundamentally reconfigured the Zambian state and economy, took hold. Aid poured in and the budget became more than 40 per cent donor dependent. Liberalization also saw a rapid expansion of civil society, which became in- creasingly influential in the 1990s, especially when it aligned itself with com- mon cause, as was the case when President Chiluba’s attempted to secure an unconstitutional third term in office. Most prominent among them were the Law Association of Zambia (laz), the Non-governmental Organisations Coor- dinating Council (ngocc) and the mother bodies of the mainstream church- es, both Protestant and Catholic. Working in tandem, they successfully under- mined Chiluba’s unconstitutional third term of office in 2001. At the same time, corruption and wastage were on the rise. As Gould pointed out, the ambitions <UN>.