Jacinda Ardern's landslide victory as she deserves

 

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will lead New Zealand for a second term after her Labour party's landslide victory in the general election of 2020. Jacinda Ardern's major victory in the 2020 election is now the headlines of news around the world.

With about 100% of the vote counted, Labour Party has secured 49.1%, with the opposition National Party on 27%. Labour Party is expected to win 64 of the 120 seats in parliament, and National Party, 35. It is the best result for the Labour party in its 50 years of history. To form a Government in New Zealand at least 61 seats are required but Jacinda's labour Party has bagged 64 seats.

Charismatic leadership of Jacinda Ardern

The analysts said, the resounded victory of Jacinda Ardern led Labour party is due to her  strong, empathetic and charismatic leadership during a series of crises like deadly attack in Christchurch Mosque and a suddenly active and deadly volcano eruption in 2019 and this year's dreadful attack of Covid-19 pandemic.

Jacinda Ardern's response after the Christchurch mosque shootings on March 15, 2019 was lauded nationally and overseas. After the attack Jacinda Ardern took quick response, she consoled her country's Muslim community in a normal human reaction; not robotic or platitudinous, not scripted or insincere. She moved quickly to pass new laws banning the deadliest types of semi-automatic weapons in New Zealand. Jacinda Ardern response to Christchurch attack was like "Be Strong and Be Kind" which was acclaimed not only in her country but also worldwide.

After the Christchurch attack Jacinda Ardern had to face natural disaster i.e. volcano eruption in December 2019. The countrymen and the world again appreciated Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for her 'classy' response to the White Island Volcano disaster. Many of the victims in the disaster were tourists from Australia, the UK, China, Malaysia and the US. To tackle the disaster, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been front and centre and her response has been immediate, compassionate and measured.

Jacinda Ardern was very much successful to combat Cpvid-19 pandemic in 2020. In March this year, when only about 100 people had tested positive for Covid-19, Jacinda Ardern put New Zealand into a strict lockdown with a motto of "Go hard and go early." Her Government also shut the borders with an ambitious goal of eliminating the Coronavirus entirely rather than just trying to control its spread. The country of 5 million has recorded fewer than 2000 cases of Covid-19, with 25 deaths till today.

Besides these, Jacinda Ardern became a role model for working mothers around the world. Ardern's pregnancy, maternity leave and the birth of her daughter while in office were viewed by many in the world as symbolizing progress for women in leadership roles. Jacinda Ardern became only the second elected leader to give birth while in office, after Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto, and made headlines when she took her baby to the U.N. General Assembly in New York in 2018.

New Zealand has several claims to setting moral precedents especially in case of Women vote right. Famously, New Zealandbecame the first country to give women the vote right in 1893, then South Australia in 1894, UK in 1918 and USA in 1920. The women of combined Bangla got the vote right in 1935.  Jacinda Ardern is the third female national leader of New Zealand but the first to introduce some form of social security for its elderly and the first to ban vessels carrying nuclear weapons from entering its waters.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has shown her empathy to the refugee and migrant people also. Starting this year, Jacinda raised the number of refugees her country would accept by 50%. From July 2020 New Zealand is accepting 1500 refugees per financial year which was 1000 earlier. Again, while Australia has been mired in a crisis over the migrant workers to whom it has denied entry and detained on islands off its coast, Jacinda Ardern has said New Zealand would take 150 of them.

New Zealand Electoral System and 2020 Election

The Parliament of New Zealand consists of a single chamber, the House of Representatives, composed of 120 members directly elected by universal adult suffrage for a 3-year term of office. New Zealand uses the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) voting system to elect its Parliament. Under MMP, 120 MPs are elected to Parliament - 72 are elected by just the voters in individual electorates around the country and 48 are from political party lists (elected by party vote in New Zealand).  Another thing, a party must have to receive more than 5% of the party vote or win an electorate seat to enter parliament, although there are guarantees for Maori candidates.

MMP is a proportional system, which means that the proportion of votes a political party gets reflects the number of seats it has in Parliament. Each voter gets two votes - The first vote is for the political party the voter chooses and the second vote is to choose the MP the voter wants to represent the local electorate they live in. In this election, New Zealand First Party led by Jane Patterson, the Deputy Prime Minister, was ousted from parliament, after the party failed to reach the 5% threshold and neither of its candidates managed to win an electorate seat.

Jacinda Ardern's Labour Party has almost 50 per cent of the vote - the most any party has achieved under MMP and easily enough to govern without relying on another party, meaning it will get more than the 61 seats needed for a parliamentary majority. It is to be mentioned here that, no party had managed to win an outright majority in New Zealand since it introduced the voting system known as Mixed Member Proportional representation (MMP) in 1996. But this year Jacinda Ardern's Labour Party breaks the chain.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed after claiming victory in New Zealand's general election that her ruling Labour Party would govern "for every New Zealander." Ms Ardern, who dubbed the poll "the Covid election", pledged to instil more climate-friendly policies, boost funding for disadvantaged schools and raise income taxes on top earners. In her victory speech Jacinda Ardern said:

"We will govern as we campaigned: positively with optimism about our future. Now more than ever is the time to keep going, to keep working, to grab hold of the opportunities that lay in front of us. Let's keep moving."  - Jacinda Ardern


The writer is Doctoral Researcher of Massey University, New Zealand
Email: [email protected]