With promises of extra financing for small businesses and more jobs as a severe economic downturn looms, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday launched her party’s campaign ahead of a September general election.
Ardern’s rise to become New Zealand’s most popular prime minister in a century, buoyed by her response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has left the country largely unscathed, has boosted her prospects in the Sept. 19 election.
COALITION’S FATE
Her Labour Party, governing in a coalition with the Greens and the nationalist New Zealand First party, is to face the National Party in what is expected to be a pandemic-dominated campaign.
If Ardern’s high ratings are mirrored in the election results, Labour would govern on its own, without needing a coalition.
The government’s early and hard coronavirus curbs that paralyzed economic activity have put the country in a technical recession for the first time in a decade.
“There wasn’t a playbook for COVID,” Ardern said at the Labour Party congress. “There wasn’t a playbook for the recovery.”
HELPING HAND
She said that a loan scheme for small businesses, which allows for no interest loans if paid back within a year and which was to end this month, would be extended until the year-end, and more environmental and infrastructure jobs would be created under a previously announced plan.
Small and medium-sized enterprises generate about one-third of New Zealand’s gross domestic product.
“I can’t think of a time in our recent history when we have been collectively challenged by such a cruel combination of events — a terrorist attack, a volcanic eruption, a global pandemic and now its ensuing financial crisis,” Ardern said.
Her leadership, widely seen as compassionate and steely, after last year’s killing of 51 Muslim worshipers in the country’s worst mass shooting, and after the eruption of a volcano that killed 21 in December last year, has brought Ardern worldwide admiration.
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