New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday delayed looming national elections by four weeks to Oct. 17 after a renewed COVID-19 outbreak hampered campaigning.
Ardern was under pressure from political opponents and her coalition partners to shift the original Sept. 19 vote following the shock discovery of COVID-19 in Auckland last week, sending the nation’s largest city into lockdown.
She said the return of the virus after 102 days without community transmission had rattled Kiwis and could have discouraged some from casting ballots next month.
Photo: AFP
Ardern, who is riding high in opinion polls, acknowledged concerns from rivals that curbs on campaigning would unfairly weigh the election in favor of her government.
After spending the weekend consulting party leaders and the Electoral Commission, she chose Oct. 17, the earliest delayed date available to her.
Ardern said the change meant all parties would be campaigning under the same conditions and she would not move the election’s timing again regardless of the situation.
“I have absolutely no intention at all to change from this point,” the prime minister said.
“This decision gives all parties time over the next nine weeks to campaign and the Electoral Commission enough time to ensure an election can go ahead,” she said.
All parties temporarily suspended campaigning in the wake of last week’s outbreak, the source of which remains unknown.
The virus was first detected in four family members in Auckland early last week and by yesterday, the cluster had grown to 58 confirmed cases, with five people in hospital.
The nation is following the same strategy that helped contain the novel coronavirus during a seven-week lockdown earlier this year — isolating positive cases, contact tracing and extensive testing.
The earlier success has helped lift Ardern’s personal popularity rating to a record 60 percent, along with her leadership during last year’s Christchurch mosque attacks and the White Island volcano eruption.
Ardern’s Labour Party is on track to win office in its own right, without the minor party coalition partners — the Greens and New Zealand First — it needed during its first term.
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