A year after the charismatic Jacinda Ardern announced her resignation as prime minister of New Zealand, both her personal life and the direction of the country have taken a radical turn. She has carried out an agenda out of the spotlight and much of the time outside the country, while the Pacific archipelago has taken a turn to the right in the last elections after the defeat of a Labor Party for which she got her best results in the last 50 years in 2020.
Ardern, who in 2017 and at 37 years old became the youngest politician in the world to hold the head of government, was recognized worldwide for empathetically leading the response to the 2019 Christchurch supremacist attack, which caused 51 deaths in two mosques; as well as her fierce fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. New Zealand, a country that is rarely heard of on the international scene, earned a place in the media around the world thanks to the way of governing of the young leader, to whom they dedicated the term “jacindamania.”
However, the management of the health emergency, which was fought with strict confinements, had several episodes of confrontations against anti-vaccine groups, among which misinformation is rampant. And that, as well as the rising cost of living, sapped both his popularity and his drive. He left out of fatigue before the fall, with the same correctness with which he held power. “I don’t have enough energy to continue with the job. It’s time,” he announced at a press conference on January 19, 2023, when almost all observers expected him to run again to revalidate the Labor Party’s majority in the elections. last October.
Despite her natural charisma, it did not seem like a popularity sought by Ardern, who has always been discreet about her personal life and has avoided the spotlight whenever possible, which partly explains her resignation when she was her most important asset. game.
Since then, Ardern has lived much of the time away from her country, as she started several programs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School in the United States on leadership and extremism and disinformation on the internet.
Jealous of her privacy, she has barely revealed details of her new life, although in an interview last September on the American channel ABC she highlighted the time she now spends with her family and especially with her five-year-old daughter Neve. However, Ardern, 43, could not avoid returning to the spotlight last Saturday, when she married her partner and father of her daughter, journalist Clarke Gayford, 47, in New Zealand.
The event served to show that Ardern remains faithful to herself in terms of the discretion and sobriety with which she leads her private life, but also to remember the furious animosity that her figure arouses in a part of the population.
A handful of anti-vaccines gathered near the wedding who, even a year after her resignation, continue to protest against the former president, who placed New Zealand as one of the most successful countries in stopping the coronavirus pandemic. These policies, praised abroad, met with increasing resistance within the country, where his Labor Party was losing strength – also due to 6% inflation – until it was defeated in the elections last October, which ended up consecrating the Conservative Christopher Luxon as Prime Minister.
