She leaves as she arrived: without anyone expecting it. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Thursday January 19 that she would step down as head of government by February 7, just nine months before the next general election. “I gave everything to be Prime Minister, but it also cost me a lotshe said, on the verge of tears, during a press conference. I just don’t have enough energy for another four years.”. The announcement caused shock waves among the 5 million inhabitants of the archipelago.
Jacinda Ardern had become, in 2017, at only 37 years old, the youngest prime minister of the country since 1856. Her arrival at the head of the government had already created a surprise: propelled candidate of the Labor Party less than two months before the election and without ever having exercised ministerial functions, the elected official had allowed her political party to win the victory when it was 20 points behind in the polls a few weeks earlier. Jacinda Ardern was a woman, young, pregnant when she took office… Suffice to say a political UFO for some of her opponents, who called her a ” star dust “ or asked her to prove that she was something other than “lipstick on a pig”according to the English expression (“lipstick on a pig”).
Once in power, Jacinda Ardern continued to impose a singular style and played with the codes of politics. In 2018, she became the second head of government to give birth during her term (after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto) and the first to take six weeks’ maternity leave before her spouse took on the role of father at home. “I will be happy when a prime minister’s pregnancy is off the news because it will be seen as normal”said the New Zealand Prime Minister in an interview with the Monde, a few weeks before her delivery. The same year, she attended the annual General Assembly of the United Nations with her three-month-old daughter, Neve, becoming the first woman leader to bring her baby into the hemicycle.
“Since she has held this position, Jacinda Ardern has been in an attempt to normalize or even humanize the leader and the political leader through the codes and standards that she highlights, where others want to represent a superiority, something of the order of the sacred or of divinity”, explains Mérabha Benchikh, doctor in sociology and specialist in gender issues in politics. A ” way to embody an alternative, another political path, a different exercise of power of Margaret Thatcher, for example, who had integrated very masculine, even virile codes”she continues.
From the Christchurch attack to Covid-19
Jacinda Ardern defends a speech “marked by a feminine rhetoric, she is empathetic, attentive”, considers Maud Navarre, a sociologist who also specializes in gender and women in politics. The New Zealand Prime Minister was particularly illustrated during the attack on two mosques in Chirstchurch in 2019, which left 51 dead and 49 seriously injured. Or during the Covid-19 pandemic. She was then able to successfully conduct a live exchange on Facebook, from her sofa, to answer questions from her fellow citizens. A trademark that has long won the support of New Zealand public opinion. In the 2020 legislative elections, Jacinda Ardern was re-elected with the Labor Party, obtaining the highest score since 1946 with more than 50% of the votes and the absolute majority of the seats.
To achieve these results, the New Zealand Prime Minister was able to count on a solid experience: a graduate in communication, she perfectly handles the codes of social networks. Moreover, when she came to power, Jacinda Ardern was anything but a neophyte and knew precisely the workings of the political world. Joining the Labor Party at the age of 17, she was then vice-president of the Party’s Youth in the early 2000s before continuing her career abroad, where she notably worked for Tony Blair’s cabinet. Back in New Zealand, she was a member of the House of Representatives from 2008.
The Prime Minister “was able to use his approach to power as a way of distinguishing himself in politics”reports M.me Navarre. And this, until the end, as illustrated by his surprise resignation justified in the first place by his personal exhaustion and the need to find his family. “This decision is strategically relevant, his popularity rating has been declining in recent months, and it may give his party a chance to win the election with someone else”, she adds. Relevant and yet unprecedented in recent history, so rare is the art of knowing how to hang up in politics.