Lockdown Queen Jacinda Ardern To Resign

While many are spinning this as having been from a nasty slip of the tongue, “calling opposition leader David Seymour an “arrogant p—-“” on hotmike, really, it’s that the citizens of New Zealand lost all faith and trust in her

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern resigns a month after hot mic insult

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Thursday that she would not seek re-election and will be stepping down next month.

Ahearn made the shocking announcement at her Labor party’s annual caucus meeting, saying she “no longer had enough in the tank” to do the job.

“I’m leaving, because with such a privileged role comes responsibility,” she said. “The responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead and also when you are not. I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It’s that simple.”

Her resignation takes effect Feb. 7.

Ardern became prime minister in 2017 and led New Zealand through a period of major incidents, including the COVID-19 pandemic and an attack on two mosques in Christchurch in which 51 people were killed. During the pandemic, she imposed some of the strictest lockdown rules in the world.

In August 2021, the country was put on lockdown for at least three days after a single case of the coronavirus was found in one community.

New Zealand was one of the worst in the world for their Wuhan Flu lockdown measures, and her party is paying the price for it, trailing badly in the polls, especially with their economy in the dumps.

(UK Daily Mail) New Zealand’s borders closed on March 20, 2020, and returning citizens had to endure two weeks of hotel quarantine.

A nationwide lockdown began on March 26 and lasted until May 27, so strict that Kiwis couldn’t even buy takeaway food like they could in Australia and other countries in lockdown.

More lockdowns followed in specific regions over the next year including two lasting several weeks across Auckland, NZ’s biggest city.

She and her party won in 2020 and 2021, but, the citizens became tired of this, along with the mask and vaccine mandates. Even The NY Times has noticed

The pandemic in particular seemed to play to her strengths as a clear and unifying communicator — until extended lockdowns and vaccine mandates hurt the economy, fueled conspiracy theories and spurred a backlash. In a part of the world where Covid restrictions lingered, Ms. Ardern has struggled to get beyond her association with pandemic policy.

“People personally invested in her, that has alway been a part of her appeal,” said Richard Shaw, a politics professor at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand.

“She became a totem,” he added. “She became the personification of a particular response to the pandemic, which people in the far-flung margins of the internet and the not so far-flung margins used against her.”

When new, more transmissible variants made that impossible, Ms. Ardern’s team pivoted but struggled to get vaccines quickly. Strict vaccination mandates then kept people from activities like work, eating out and getting haircuts.

The question now is, do other leaders and parties pay the price? Australia and Canada would be two to consider. None here in the states seem to be paying the price, because there is just too much partisanship. Hey, the wackos re-elected Gretchen Whitmer, who was one of the worst in the U.S.

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