Jacinda Ardern, a leader who has made “kindness” a hallmark of her mandate. [VIDEO]

In the direct but friendly style of the Prime Minister New Zealand, Jacinda Ardernwho today announced her resignation because “a leader must know when to leave” has become a benchmark of progressivism and feminism in world politics since her early rise to power at the age of 37.

“You can be kind and strong, and you can also be a leader who knows when it’s time to quit,” a visibly emotional Ardern said today, announcing that she will step down on February 7, just months before the nation’s elections. October 14.

Admitting in a fresh style that has raised the profile of the country of five million on the world stage that it has “no energy” for a new term, the politician leaves after years of significant exhaustion and declining popular support.

Labor is losing steam with the end of the legislature marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, rising costs of living and a possible recession in 2023, according to the latest polls.

Although in October 2020 he was able to confirm his mandate and that Labor Party to rule alone, something no entity has managed since the 1996 electoral reform, a second legislature appears to have taken its toll on the 42-year-old Ardern.

Mormon past

Born July 26, 1980 in Hamilton, North Island. New ZealandArdern grew up in the cities of Morrinsville and Murupara in a modest environment, the daughter of a police officer and a former member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Temple).

A devout Mormon as a child and teenager, Ardern revealed in an interview in 2017 that she gave up her faith because of the Church’s judgmental stance on the LGBT community, sharing an apartment with three gay friends, and years later she voted for equal marriage in parliament in 2013.

After joining Labor Party at the age of 17 and quickly standing out among the youth of the formation, he graduated from the Faculty of Communications at the University of Waitako.

The youngest manager in the world

Over time, Jacinda Ardern became the youngest member of New Zealand in 2008, after a trip abroad in which she worked in a popular kitchen in New York preparing meatballs, before working on a consultant team in London for then British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

In August 2017, she succeeded Andrew Littler as Labor leader after being trusted by the party to lead the party to victory in the September elections of that year.

A triumph that made her break another record, becoming then, at the age of 37, the youngest leader in the world.

His litmus test came soon after, on March 15, 2019, when an Australian white supremacist shot dead 51 people while storming two mosques in the city of Christchurch, in what was the worst terrorist attack in the country’s history.

Ardern immediately announced gun law reform, showed sympathy by donning the Islamic veil, and turned the pain of the Muslim minority into the pain of the entire country by saying “we are one, they are us.”

feminist icon

During her first term, in June 2018, Ardern had her first daughter with her partner, Clark Gayfordmaking her the second president to give birth during her reign after the deceased Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007), Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Ardern tried to normalize her role as a mother and leader with landmark decisions, such as taking a little girl as an infant to the General Assembly. UN in New York in 2018, an image that went around the world, being the first time the leader has done so.

Most recently, during a November visit by her Finnish counterpart Sanna Marin, Ardern was quick to respond to the question of whether they were dating because they have “a lot in common” by asking if former US President Barack had asked the same thing Obama and former New Zealand leader John Ki when they saw each other in the past.

Pandemic issues

But not all was praise. While the Ardern government’s response to the pandemic was initially welcomed by limiting the spread of the infection to strict border controls and lockdown policies, the draconian measures were not to everyone’s taste.

Similarly, the reopening process was spiced up by massive anti-vaccination protests last year.

A crisis during which Ardern, who was criticized for trying to cover up his government’s shortcomings with his personal charisma and eloquence, repeatedly invoked the “leitmotif” of his nearly completed term: “Be kind. Stay strong”. (EFE)