The Clerk, the gavel and 266 seats: the Fourteenth Assembly sits for the first time today — and can do nothing until it has a Speaker

Parliament returns to life this morning the way the Standing Orders insist it must: with an empty chair at the front of the chamber and only one question to answer. The National Assembly's Order Paper for Friday, 2 October — the first sitting of the Fourteenth Assembly since the 13 August general election — carries a single item: the election of the Speaker, the First Deputy Speaker and the Second Deputy Speaker. Until a Speaker is chosen, the House can transact no other business: no bills, no motions, no questions to ministers. The ceremony is the constitution's way of saying that nothing in the next five years happens before this.

The choreography belongs, for once, not to a politician but to an official. With no Speaker in office, the Clerk of the National Assembly reads the gazette notice convening the House, takes the chair, and presides over the election of the presiding officers — determining any questions that arise before and during those elections. Members have already taken and subscribed the oath or affirmation of office in the days since the results were settled, clearing the only procedural hurdle before today's sitting. Once the gavel has an owner, the Clerk withdraws, and the Fourteenth Assembly becomes a parliament.

The chamber being constituted today is unlike any Zambia has had. The Constitution (Amendment) Act No. 13 of 2025 expanded the House from 156 constituency seats to 226 and added 40 proportional-representation seats — a 266-member assembly designed to broaden representation after decades of debate about who Parliament leaves out. Three constituency contests remain unresolved: Mandevu, Lumezi North and Mbala vote on 5 November in by-elections ordered after the August disruptions, meaning the assembly that elects its Speaker today is, on paper, three members short of its full complement.

The question hanging over the government benches is one MakanDay's parliamentary desk posed this week plainly: will President Hichilema nominate Nelly Mutti for another term as Speaker? Mutti, the lawyer and former Human Rights Commission chairperson who became Zambia's first female Speaker in 2021, presided over the Thirteenth Assembly through the repeal of the defamation-of-the-President law, the constitutional amendment battles and the election itself. The ruling party's majority gives its nominee a clear run; whether that nominee is Mutti or a new face is the first political signal of the new term. Across the aisle, the opposition benches must settle a leadership question of their own, with reports this week naming Ezra Tembo and Stephen Kampyongo as rival candidates for Leader of the Opposition — a post filled from the non-government benches and central to how the House's oversight committees are shared out.

After today, the calendar accelerates. President Hichilema is expected to officially open the session on Friday, 9 October, delivering the address that sets out the new government's legislative programme — the speech in which the Grow Zambia Agenda meets the 2027 budget season, and in which the promises of the campaign are converted into a list of bills. The four-year argument about what the expanded Parliament is for begins, technically, this morning. But first, the House must decide who holds the gavel while it argues.

Sources: National Assembly of Zambia, Order Paper for Friday, 2 October 2026, parliament.gov.zm (1 Oct 2026); MakanDay, "Before Parliament Gets Down to Business" (27 Sep 2026); Constitution of Zambia (Amendment) Act No. 13 of 2025; News Diggers, "ECZ sets Nov 5 for Lumezi, Mandevu parliamentary elections" (26 Sep 2026); Lusaka Brief archive on the 2026 general election.