Outgoing New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday said she was grateful for her time in office, adding that a sustained barrage of online abuse was not the reason for her shock resignation.
The 42-year-old last week said she no longer had “enough in the tank” after a turbulent five years, during which she steered the country through natural disasters, its worst-ever terror attack and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Her resignation, less than three years after an emphatic election victory, has ignited a national debate about the vitriol faced by female leaders, especially on social media.
Photo: AP
Chris Hipkins, who is to take over as prime minister, has said Ardern experienced “utterly abhorrent” abuse while leading the country.
However, Ardern said she would not describe it that way.
While on her last public engagement as prime minister, visiting the Maori settlement of Ratana in the North Island, she said she would “hate” for her departure to be seen as “a negative commentary on New Zealand.”
“I leave feeling gratitude for having this wonderful role for so many years,” she told reporters from the birthplace of one of the country’s most influential indigenous political movements.
The popularity of Ardern’s Labour government has soured in recent months, hampered by a looming recession and a resurgent Conservative opposition.
Hipkins is to be sworn in as prime minister today, saying it was “bittersweet” to replace his friend of 20 years.
“I’m really honored to take on the role, but Jacinda is also a very good friend of mine,” he told reporters yesterday.
Hipkins, 44, said there were “moments when it sinks in, and moments when it doesn’t feel quite real.”
Ardern said she would now be stepping back from domestic politics and offered some advice for Hipkins.
“Probably the most important advice I gave him was ‘you do you,’” she said. “It’s for him to carve out his own space and be his own kind of leader.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
RSS