New Zealand Prime Minister announces resignation – “not enough in the tank” US worried about maneuvers by Russia and Belarus – the nightly update without photos

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern surprisingly announced her resignation. In two and a half weeks, on February 7, she will give up her position, the 42-year-old said with tears in her eyes on Thursday. “I know what you need for this job and I know I don’t have enough in the tank. It’s that simple,” she explained her decision at her first press conference this year. “We all give as long as we can give and then it’s over. And now it’s time for me.”

Her resignation will take effect when a successor is appointed. A new leader of the Labor Party will be elected on Sunday. At the same time, Ardern announced the date for the next parliamentary elections: the Pacific state will go to the polls on October 14.

The popular Labor politician gained media attention around the world when she became the world’s youngest Prime Minister in 2017 at just 37 years old. In just a few months, she rose from Deputy Opposition Leader to Head of Government. Her meteoric rise has a name in New Zealand: Jacindamania. When she gave birth to daughter Neve in June 2018, she became the first Prime Minister in decades to give birth while in office. Ardern has been with Neve’s father, journalist Clarke Gayford, since 2013.

Her empathetic character and her successful crisis management quickly made her an international name. She won a landslide victory for Labor in the October 2020 election – and was re-elected for a further three years.

Ardern has had to overcome several serious crises in recent years. In particular, her approach to the attacks in Christchurch, in which a right-wing extremist from Australia shot 51 Muslims in two mosques in March 2019, earned her a lot of recognition abroad. In December 2019, more than 20 people died in a volcanic eruption on White Island, and Corona struck a few months later.

New Zealand locked

The Ardern government responded with one of the strictest curfews in the world, closing the country to foreign visitors. The result: New Zealand has come through the pandemic relatively unscathed for a long time. For a long time, the citizens of the small country on the other side of the world lived a normality that was almost forgotten, while in most other countries there were huge restrictions.

After a year and a half, Ardern also had to admit that no country in the world can completely eradicate the corona virus in the long term. The “zero Covid strategy” was lifted at the end of 2021.

“With such a privileged role comes responsibility, including the responsibility of knowing when you’re the right person to lead and when you’re not,” she said. The office asked a lot of her. “You can and should only do the job if you have a full tank, plus a little reserve for the unplanned and unexpected challenges that inevitably come.” She hopes she has given New Zealanders the belief that they can be their own kind of leader: “Someone who knows when it’s time to go.” (sda/dpa)