You can lead just like me,’ Jacinda Ardern says in final speech to New Zealand Parliament
All New Zealanders should feel politics can be a home for them, former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Wednesday, in a final address to Parliament after leading the nation through the Covid-19 pandemic and a terror attack in Christchurch.
Ardern, who thanked her family, her political party and her supporters, had stepped down as prime minister in January, saying she had “no more in the tank” to lead the country.
She had burst onto the global scene in 2017 when she became the world’s youngest female head of government at age 37. She gained further international attention when she took her baby to a United Nations meeting.
Popular abroad, at home higher prices, rising crime and controversial reforms to water and agriculture eventually chipped away at her support.
As head of the center-left Labour party for five years, Ardern steered New Zealand through a volcanic eruption, a 2019 attack by a gunman in Christchurch that killed 51 Muslim worshippers and the pandemic.
Jacinda Ardern, who stepped down as prime minister of New Zealand in January, gives a final address to Parliament in Wellington on Wednesday.Mark Coote / AFP - Getty Images
Ardern said she had found herself involved in people’s lives “during their most grief-stricken or traumatic moments” in that series of events. Read More…
