On Thursday the Prime Minister of New Zealand surprised her own and others with the decision to leave. Of the leadership of her party and of the Executive that she heads. After two elections, a pandemic, a volcanic eruption and several terrorist attacks, Jacinda Ardern found herself without the necessary fuel to continue, and in her quiet resignation she showed that in politics you not only have to know how, but also when to leave.
The first thing to review is the reason: “I don’t have the necessary energy to continue.” The still prime minister does not see herself with enough strength or with the necessary state of mind to be competitive in the next elections or to continue adding to her country. The detail is not trivial. More often than not, politics seems to come with the emotional mask pack. An implicit term of conditions by which the representatives of the citizenry must not only be perfect, but also appear so. Don’t be wrong, don’t be yourself, don’t show yourself vulnerable (that is, true). Leadership and its construction continue to be understood in traditional and, above all, masculine terms. Ardern, and many others before it, break this historical thread and stand up. If you don’t feel well, if you don’t feel capable, it’s okay to say so and, above all, to act accordingly. Politics wears out due to the high levels of load that have to be borne. And when your shoulders don’t give more of themselves, it’s time to make way for another.
Ardern’s case also contrasts powerfully with that of those leaders who subordinate their own ego to the collective will; the survival of the national interest. Generally men, these politicians sometimes do not know how to see the end of the era, much less accept it when it comes to them by force. Mark Rutte, leader of the liberal-conservative VVD in the Netherlands, has been in power for a whopping 12 years. An amount of time that in the eyes of the public is more than enough, as shown by his levels of trust and popularity, the lowest of a European chief executive.
Something similar is also happening in Canada, where the once popular Justin Trudeau is in a phase of negative evaluation and his party falls in the polls after almost nine years in power. It has happened recently with the castling of Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom, which in addition to delving into the political labyrinth that the country is already experiencing since Brexit, has also sunk the image of his party and plunged society into political apathy.
This obsession with staying in power, both political and media, is detrimental not only to your personal health, but also to the project, ideas and citizenship you represent. And it is not only necessary to know when to leave, but also when to let the others follow or the new ones arrive. Ardern expressed it with the double symbolism of responsibility: that of knowing when it is your moment and when it is no longer. To which I add: also recognize the time of others.
The New Zealand Labor leader does the hardest thing, acknowledging that she can subtract more than add, step back and allow her party to regenerate and her country to move forward. The institutionalization of this process is precisely what allowed her party to win the elections and regain the government for the first time since 2008. Ardern’s predecessor resigned, passed the baton and the Labor party managed to obtain its best results in decades.
The praise of humanity (“I am human, we politicians are human”), the permissibility of regeneration and the forms represent a transition model that should be replicated by all those formations that subordinate ideas and programs to the durability of their leaders. Although forced political deaths (either due to the rejection of the ballot box or the loss of support of the acronyms) are the rule, it is better to observe the few exceptions of knowing when to leave and to let politics arrive so that the changes continue, the ideas are strengthened and the projects widen. And, above all, avoid the dangerous temptations of becoming Chinese vases from comfortable but never politically virtuous vantage points.
