[Nouvelle-Zélande : démission surprise de la Première ministre Jacinda Ardern]

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced her resignation on Thursday, surprising her country by saying she did not have “enough energy” to continue ruling after five and a half years in power and nine months before legislative elections.

Speaking at a party meeting, Ms Ardern said: “I’m human. We give everything we can and for as long as we can, and then it’s time. And for me, it’s time.”

“I don’t have enough energy for another four years,” she added, adding that she would step down on February 7.

Jacinda Ardern, 42, became prime minister in a coalition government in 2017, before leading the center-left Labor Party to a landslide victory in the next election three years later.

During her tenure, she faced the Covid-19 pandemic, a deadly volcanic eruption and the country’s worst ever attack, the killing of 51 Muslim worshipers at a Christchurch mosque by a white supremacist in 2019.
Hugely popular abroad, appearing on the covers of Vogue and Time magazines, she has long enjoyed record approval ratings in New Zealand too, where the media has sometimes spoken of her “Jacindamania”. But she has recently seen her partisan and personal support decline in opinion polls as the economic situation worsens and the right-wing opposition regains strength.

“The time has come. It has destroyed the economy and food prices have gone up like crazy,” Esther Hedges, a resident of Cambridge on New Zealand’s North Island, complained Thursday.

“I am not happy with her and I don’t know anyone,” the 65-year-old added.
For Christina Sayre, 38, Ms Ardern is, on the contrary, “our best prime minister”. “I love the kind of person she is and she cares about people. I’m sorry to see her go.”

October 14 elections

Last month, Ardern’s nervousness was evident when she was inadvertently caught on the microphone calling the Leader of the Opposition an “arrogant idiot”.

In her first public appearance since Parliament went into summer recess a month ago, Ardern made it clear on Thursday that she had hoped to use the break to find the energy to continue governing.
“But I just couldn’t do it,” she admitted.

She announced that the next elections would be held on 14 October, and until then she would continue to exercise her mandate as an MP.

Recent opinion polls give the centre-right coalition an edge over the Labor Party in this election. But Ms Ardern maintained that this was not the reason for her departure.

“I’m not leaving because I think we can’t win the next election, but because I think we can and we will,” she said.

She said her resignation would take effect no later than February 7, and Labor would vote to appoint a new leader within three days.

Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson immediately announced that he would not be a candidate to succeed Ms Ardern.
The outgoing prime minister confirmed that there was no secret reason for her resignation. “I am leaving because such a privileged position entails a huge responsibility. A responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead, and also when you are not,” she said.

Jacinda Ardern was the world’s second prime minister to give birth in office in 2018, after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto in 1990. She said she was looking forward to spending more time with her daughter Neve, who is due to start school later this year, and to get married From her TV co-star Clark Gifford.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese praised Ms Ardern as the head of government who has “showed the world how to lead with intelligence and strength”.

© AFP