NZ’S ARDERN REELECTED, REWARDED FOR VIRUS HANDLING
A Labor Party member said people were grateful of how they handled the pandemic
WELLINGTON— Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s center-left Labor Party won a landslide victory in New Zealand’s general election on Saturday as voters rewarded her for a decisive response to COVID-19.
The mandate means Ardern, 40, could form the first single-party government in decades, and face the challenge of delivering on the progressive transformation she promised but failed to deliver in her first term, where Labor shared power with a nationalist party.
“This is a historic shift,” said political commentator Bryce Edwards of Victoria University in Wellington, describing the vote as one of the biggest swings in New Zealand’s electoral history in 80 years.
Labor was on track to win 64 of the 120 seats in the country’s unicameral parliament, the highest by any party since New Zealand adopted a proportional voting system in 1996.
If Labor wins more than half the seats, Ardern could form the first single-party government under the current system.
Labor had 49 percent of the votes, far ahead of National at 27 percent, the Electoral Commission said, with 95 percent of ballots counted in an election that was largely a referendum on Ardern’s aggressive handling of COVID-19.
“People were very grateful and very happy with how we’ve handled COVID, they like the shape of the plan that we’ve got going forward from here for the economy,” said Finance Minister Grant Robertson, a top Labor MP.
Popularity and brand
Geoffrey Miller, analyst at political website Democracy Project, said the victory was “very much a personal triumph for Jacinda Ardern’s ‘superstar’ popularity and brand.”
Of Ardern’s current coalition partners, the nationalist New Zealand First Party had 2.6 percent and the Green Party 8 percent.
National leaders were decimated in their strongholds by young Labor candidates who appealed to voters with progressive, democratic messages, and highlighted the party’s success in beating the coronavirus.
A Labor-green coalition would be the first fully left-leaning government since the 1970s, a scenario that National’s Collins warned would mean more taxes and an environment hostile to business.
Ardern has pledged to raise taxes on top earners, while Collins promised short-term tax cuts, but they have otherwise shown few major differences on policy.
The prime minister won global acclaim for her handling of a mass shooting last year by a white supremacist in Christchurch, with her inclusive “be strong, be kind” mantra and swift action to ban guns.
She burnished that reputation this year with a “go hard, go early” approach to the new coronavirus, which has eliminated locally spread COVID-19 in the nation.
Tourism bleeding
The election was delayed by a month after new COVID-19 infections in Auckland, that led to a second lockdown in the country’s largest city.
While known internationally for promoting progressive causes such as woman’s rights and social justice, at home Ardern faced criticism that her government failed on a promise to be transformational.
Life is back to normal in New Zealand, but its borders are still shut, its tourism sector is bleeding and economists predict a lasting recession after the harsh lockdowns.
The economy shrank at a 12.2 percent annual clip in the second quarter, its steepest drop since the Great Depression. Debt is forecast to rise to 56 percent of gross domestic product from less than 20 percent before the pandemic.