Newsman: A global progressive icon, the New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is resigning . She said, she is exhausted since taking power in 2017 and will step down by Feb. 7.2023. Jacinda Ardern., said she no longer had “enough in the tank” to do justice to the job.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made the announced Thursday, saying she no longer had “enough in the tank” after a premiership defined by her response to a series of crises.
“With such a privileged role comes responsibility — the responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead, and also when you are not,” Ardern said in a surprise announcement in Napier, where her governing center-left Labour Party is holding a caucus retreat. “I know what this job takes, and I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice.”
She said she would resign as prime minister no later than Feb. 7 and would not seek re-election to Parliament later this year.
“This has been the most fulfilling five and a half years of my life, but it has also had its challenges,” Ardern told reporters. “Among an agenda focused on housing, child poverty and climate change, we encountered a major biosecurity incursion, a domestic terror event, a major natural disaster, a global pandemic and an economic crisis.
“The decisions that have had to be made have been continual, and they have been weighty,” she said.
The Labour Party will hold a vote for a new leader Sunday. If that person receives more than two-thirds of caucus support, Ardern said, she will resign soon after and the new leader will be sworn in as prime minister. Otherwise, the vote will go to the wider party membership.
Ardern said she plans to remain in Parliament until April, avoiding the need for a snap vote in her suburban Auckland electorate. Beyond that, she said, she has no plans other than spending time with her family.
“I’m not leaving because I believe we can’t win the election, but because I believe we can and will, and we need a fresh set of shoulders for that challenge,” she said.
But her approval ratings have plummeted at home, jeopardizing her re-election prospects and intensifying the vitriolic abuse she has experienced throughout her time in office.
Jacinda Ardern, was the world’s youngest female leader when she first took office in 2017. She has become a global progressive icon . Ardern has faced a number of challenges including the mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch that killed 51 people, a deadly volcanic eruption, an outbreak of cattle disease and the coronavirus.
Ardern was praised for her “zero-Covid” approach to the pandemic and the managed transition away from it once vaccines became available, allowing life inside the country to continue largely as normal while minimizing deaths. She was a highly visible face of New Zealand’s pandemic response, urging the country’s “team of 5 million” people to face the crisis together at near-daily public briefings.
Ardern was the world’s second elected head of government to give birth while in office, bringing her 3-month-old daughter, Neve, to the floor of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in 2018. The first elected world leader to ever give birth while in office, was Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto in 1990.
In her remarks Thursday, Ardern said that her partner, television presenter Clarke Gayford — whose wedding to Ardern was postponed by the pandemic — and Neve were “the ones that have sacrificed the most out of all of us.”
“To Neve: Mum is looking forward to being there when you start school this year,” she said. “And to Clarke — let’s finally get married.” Along with a perceived increase in violent crime, New Zealand is facing many of the same issues as other countries, including a housing crisis, income inequality and surging inflation
