ARDERNSTORMSTO HISTORICPOLLWIN
Prime Minister delivers the biggest victory for her party in half a century as voters rewarded her for a crushing response to Covid |
We will not take your support for granted. And I can promise you we will be a party that governs for every New Zealander.”
Jacinda Ardern | New Zealand Prime Minister
Jacinda Ardern turned speaking from the heart and smiling through adversity into awinning formula for a blowout re- election as New Zealand’s leader yesterday.
The New Zealand prime minister delivered the biggest election victory for her centre- left Labour Party in half a century yesterday 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 will face the challenge of delivering on the progressive transformation she promised but failed to deliver in her first term, where Labour 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. Labour 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.
STANDINGOVATION
Walking into a standing ovation, a beaming Ardern opened her victory speech at the Auckland Town Hall with a greeting in Te Reo Maori, the indigenous language of New Zealand. “Tonight New Zealand has shown the Labour Party its greatest support in at least 50 years,” she declared.
Now Ardern, who made a name for herself by crushing Covid- 19 in the country and healing the nation after a massacre of Muslims by a white supremacist, faces a challenge to show her leadership extends beyond crisis management and kindness.
FULL OFEMPATHY
The win is also the reward for Ardern’s leadership through a series of extraordinary events that shaped her first three- year term: the gunman’smassacre of 51worshippers at two Christchurch mosques and the eruption of the White Island volcano, which killed 21.
“Be strong, be kind,” New Zealand’s youngest prime minister in more than a century repeated through these dramatic events, her empathetic leadership and crisis management skills often masking her government’s shortcomings.
Ardern’s left- leaning government will face a looming economic hangover from Covid19, a deep plunge in output and surge in debt after her strict lockdowns, a worsening housing crisis and a growing divide between rich and poor.
Despite promising a transformational termin 2017, Ardern’s affordable housing programme was set back by blunders, plans for a capital- gains tax that would have addressed the growing rich- poor divide were scrapped, and her government fell woefully short of its goal to reduce child poverty.
Even on climate change, which Ardern called “my generation’s nuclear- free moment”, progress has been incremental.
“I think it’s fair to say they have not achieved what they had hoped to achieve,” said Ganesh Nana, Research Director at Wellington economic think tank BERL.
GLOBALICON
Ardern burst onto the global scene in 2017 when she became the world’s youngest female
head of government at the age of 37. She became a global icon in a rise dubbed “Jacinda- mania,” as she campaigned passionately for women’s rights and an end to child poverty and economic inequality in the island nation.
Asked by a television presenter, hours after being appointed Labour leader in 2017, whether she planned to have children, Ardern said it was “totally unacceptable in 2017 to say that women should have to answer that question in the workplace”.
Ardern did in fact have a baby daughter in June 2018, eight months after becoming prime minister — only the second elected leader to give birth while in office, after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto.
Many took her pregnancy and maternity leave in office as symbolising progress for women leaders.
Helen Clark, a former New Zealand prime minister for whom Ardern worked after university, said the young leader represents a refreshing and sharp point of difference in a world where news is dominated by utterances of populist and authoritarian leaders.
“Jacinda Ardern can be best compared with the three Scandinavian women prime ministers who are from the centreleft,” said Clark, co- chair of a World Health Organisation panel on the global Covid- 19 response.
CHRISTCHURCH MOSQUE ATTACKS
“All of them have led good responses to the pandemic, putting health security first and communicating in an empathetic way with the public in each of their countries.”
Last year Ardern received worldwide praise for her response to the Christchurch attacks, which she labelled terrorism. She wore a hijab as she met the Muslim community the next day, telling them the country was “united in grief”.
She delivered a ban on semiautomatic firearms and other gun curbs, a stark contrast to the United States, where lawmakers and activists have struggled to address gun violence despite numerous mass shootings.
At the UN General Assembly, Ardern asked world leaders: “What if we no longer see ourselves based on what we look like, what religion we practice, or where we live ... but by what we value? Humanity, kindness, an innate sense of our connection to each other. And a belief that we are guardians, not just of our home and our planet, but of each other.”