Jacinda Ardern averted crisis after crisis, but did not come out unscathed

From the Christchurch attack to the corona pandemic. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s career has been marked by crisis management. After more than five years, she announced today that she wants to step down before completing her term. She is known and praised worldwide, but in her own country she has become less and less popular in recent times. A look back.

Although the conservative party won the elections in 2017, it failed to secure a majority. As a result, Labor manages to form a coalition with Ardern as prime minister. On October 26, 2017, she will be sworn in as the youngest prime minister in the country’s history.

A few months later, the new prime minister comes via Instagram with good news. “I will be prime minister and mother at the same time,” is the text with which she announces her pregnancy. The world leader continues to work until the birth of her daughter in June. She is the first sitting prime minister to give birth after Pakistani Prime Minister Bhutto. After giving birth, Ardern will go on leave for six weeks, a period during which Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters will lead the country.

When she returns to work, the prime minister immediately makes a statement. She takes her three-month-old baby to the UN General Assembly in New York. The girl is still breastfed and therefore has to stay close to her mother. Baby Neve is cared for by her father, Clarke Gayford, while her mother is at work.

Ardern is then already regarded as a symbol of emancipation and makes that clear in her statement. “I understand that everyone finds it interesting that I am the second woman in the world to have had a child during her prime minister,” she told the New Zealand press. “It’s unusual. But the day will come when it won’t be. It won’t be seen as something extraordinary anymore. And I look forward to that day.”

And then, on March 15, 2019, the deadliest shooting in modern New Zealand history takes place. An Australian extremist shoots dead 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, wounding 40 others. All eyes are on New Zealand as the prime minister visits relatives and talks to the Muslim community. Her response has been praised worldwide.

Three days after the attack, the New Zealand Prime Minister announces that the cabinet has broadly agreed on reforms to the gun law. “We have made a decision as a cabinet, we are united,” she says after submitting the bill.

Within a month, the proposal was approved, almost unanimously. Result: All automatic and semi-automatic assault weapons are banned. Something that was unimaginable in New Zealand until that time.

When the world is locked down at the beginning of 2020 due to the corona pandemic, Ardern is still extremely popular. The prime minister opts for a strict lockdown. As the virus continues to claim more lives worldwide, New Zealand keeps the virus under control. All travelers must be quarantined and a lockdown for the entire country will soon follow. Domestic travel is also prohibited and almost all shops must close. The island state is on lockdown. By isolating the island from the rest of the world, people can get on with their lives.

Due to the low infection rate, New Zealanders are still happy with their prime minister. In October, the Labor Party won an absolute majority of the vote, which no party had achieved in decades before. While the rest of the world is in lockdown, Auckland is starting the new year 2021 in a festive way.

But it soon becomes clear that Ardern’s policy also has a downside. The tourism industry is important to New Zealand and so many people miss out on income. She receives a lot of criticism, because she would take economic interests too little into account. New Zealanders abroad were also unable to enter their own country for a while. And eventually the vaccination campaign gets off to a slow start.

It leads to Ardern’s popularity dropping rapidly. Now, with her announced departure, her party must look for a new face.