βπ π¨ π¨πππ πππ€π₯π π£πͺ π£πππππ πππππππ πΈπ£πππ£π ππ€ βπ?
βπ π¨ π¨πππ πππ€π₯π π£πͺ π£πππππ πππππππ πΈπ£πππ£π ππ€ βπ?
ππ ππππππ€πππͺ, πππππππ πΈπ£πππ£π πππ§ππ€ πππ£ π§πππππππ₯π π£πͺ π€π‘ππππ πππ ππππ§ππ€ βππ£πππππππ₯, ππππππͺ ππ π£ππ§ππ£. βπ π¨ π¨πππ πππ€π₯π π£πͺ π£ππ₯π πππ£ π₯π¦π£ππ¦ππππ₯ π‘ππ£ππ π ππ€ π‘π£πππ πππππ€π₯ππ£? πππ§ππ βπ π£π’π¦ππͺ π£ππ‘π π£π₯π€.
Jacinda Ardern was a political shooting star who lit up politics both here and overseas, but her leadership became increasingly shadowed by mistrust, misogyny and social media mayhem.
Judging her legacy is complicated. Life in politics rarely ends well. Elections simply move you one step closer to the misery of rejection at the ballot booth, or enforced retirement.
In both cases, there will be more who celebrate your demise than say thanks.
As a politician, Ardern was a populist success; the most popular PM in recent history, both in the polls and at the ballot box. And yet, she was also very unpopular, a target of online hate and virulent protest, which followed the arrival of an invisible and insidious enemy, Covid.
.
.
Her “be kind” front-and-centre handling of Covid won plaudits, allowing her in 2020 to form the first majority government since the first MMP election in 1996.
As the pandemic dragged frustration, anxiety and division grew, with turbulence and public anger that academics maintain has not been seen since the 1981 Springbok tour.
Unlike 1981, the enemy was invisible, not touring the country to play rugby. For those who had lost their jobs to vaccine mandates, suffered anxiety, seen their businesses fold, Ardern was a visible target.
The left-wing commentator, Martyn ‘Bomber’ Bradbury, editor of The Daily Blog, says Ardern’s greatest strength - empathy and kindness - was also a political Achilles heel.
“To my mind, there are two Jacindas - the one with superhuman emotional intelligence in moments of crisis that had us bonded in solidarity to one another, and the super cautious domestic policy Jacinda who, despite having our hearts soar from the rhetoric of transformation, always managed to disappoint in delivery,” he says.
“There are only so many 'good first steps' before you accept you are jogging on the spot. In the end her kindness exacerbated anger because when you are hurting, having someone smile at you makes you angrier.”
The best PM since Michael Savage. Intelligent and evidence based leadership. The negativity of a tiny minority of ignorant NZers was amplified by a corrupt msm.https://t.co/eiIKDNYAg8
— murray pearce (@pearce_murray) April 1, 2023
Bradbury called it “neo-kindness”.
“The level of toxic social media hate algorithms spewed against her demeaned us all as a people. She saved us from a mass death event, yet we turned on her,” he says.
“The day she stood down, we gasped as a country at how we ended up breaking her.
“When China tries to tell the history books that their authoritarian model and state coercion was the best way to defeat Covid compared to the weak democracies of the west, New Zealand can proudly hold its head up and point to our results based on being open and frank with our citizens and trusting in them to act in the common good.
“We could only do that because we had Jacinda as our leader. History will remember her boldness and we won't forget it either. We will just wish she did so much more.”
In April 2020, a month after Covid showed its ugly face, Ardern recorded an 83% favourable poll rating – a record.
John Key peaked at 81% in October 2009 after helping the country out of the global financial crisis, Helen Clark at 78% in April 2002, the year following the Twin Towers attack.
Sociologist Paul Spoonley tells Stuff Ardern reacted more swiftly and decisively to the threat of Covid than overseas counterparts, and demographic statistics show that helped keep Kiwis safer.
“In the high income world, only three countries have seen an increase in life expectancy (since Covid), and those are Finland, Taiwan and New Zealand,” he says.
“What you see around the world is, the lack of public health measures to minimise the impact of Covid has meant that many countries - for example, the USA - have seen a significant decrease in life expectancy.”
Countries which handled Covid well also performed better economically, The Economist found.
Business New Zealand CEO Kirk Hope regards Ardern’s best contribution as “probably the free trade deals negotiated during her tenure, and her international diplomacy generally”.
Domestically there were differences of opinion, and “there might have been frustrations”. Fair pay agreements were one area that “continue to cause apprehensions for businesses seeking good staff relations and higher productivity.
“I appreciated that her door was always open, and my experience was that there was always an openness and willingness to engage.
”During most of her prime ministership there was a lot of work with, and engagement with, the business community, much of it behind the scenes and probably not widely apparent.
“For some in business there might have been frustration about recommendations from the prime minister’s Business Advisory Council that weren’t actioned or were subsequently negotiated away.”
The youngest PM in more than 150 years, Ardern was also the quickest rise to power. Only she has been able to form a majority government under MMP. She was only the second elected leader in the world to give birth in office.
Three months prior to being sworn in as PM, she was not even Labour Party leader. And yet, for all her political appeal and cut through she lasted little more than five turbulent pressure cooker years, steering New Zealand through Covid, the Whakaari/White Island explosion, the Christchurch mosque shooting, and a cost of living crisis.
It was a truncated stint; Helen Clark led for nine years, John Key for eight, Jim Bolger for seven. Richard Seddon, Rob Muldoon, William Massey, and Keith Holyoake all topped a decade.
Ardern might best be summed up by this quote by Eleanor Rosalynn Carter, the American writer and activist who was married to former US President Jimmy Carter.
"A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be."
Bradbury says it is important to properly farewell and thank Ardern, hailing her for her ability to inspire women.
“Her legacy is that she made every woman I respect and love stand two inches taller. Her leadership as a woman was authentic female power at its most humanly powerful. Kindness was a strength, not a weakness,” he says.
“When international visitors ask if I know Jacinda, I laugh and admit she babysat my daughter once and that I worked with her partner as a Radio DJ,” he says.
Someone who was closer to her leadership than most as her deputy in Labour’s first term, NZ First leader Winston Peters, may be best placed to judge her.
The relationship between Ardern and Peters - initially hailed as evidence of Ardern’s ability to bridge a divide - was perhaps emblematic of her leadership; the relationship quickly foundered and became increasingly toxic over their political divisions.
Peters keeps it short when asked to judge her legacy:
“Ask me after the election because how Labour is judged at the end of its second term, a term served by themselves, will form much of Jacinda Ardern’s legacy.”
”Sociologist Paul Spoonley argues demographics point to the ability of Ardern to lead and manage through Covid.
“The social cohesion in New Zealand, in terms of responding in taking on expert medical advice, and listening to the government, was extraordinarily high. There are one or two other countries that were equal, but not many,” he says.
“(But) in late 2021 and early 2022 when you get quite a significant shift in some communities which is hostile to Jacinda Ardern. Some of them are the anti-vaxx and anti-mandate communities, but there's also quite a significant shift, which is hostile to her in particular from some rural communities, and primary producers.”
New Zealand was at that time facing an “unusual” set of circumstances that caused disruption and social anxiety in a number of different ways: a mass shooting, a volcanic explosion, the threat of bovis to our agriculture, waves of Covid, then a cost of living crisis.
“Even if we talk about a major conflict, like World War II, what you've got to acknowledge for this current government is the sort of multidimensionality of the crises that impacted in a very different set of ways,” he says.
“In terms of all crises that this government has encountered, they literally have not been experienced before.”
And what had also never been seen before - the 1981 Springbok tour aside - was the level of social anger exhibited in public, with social media making it easier for the disaffected to find allies.
Key had not had it to the same level - Apple’s groundbreaking iPhone was released a year after he came to power, in 2006. Key too, did not have to deal with the misogyny aimed at Ardern.
Most of the worst NZ-based online vitriol across selected 'dark corners of the web' was aimed at Ardern, Auckland University researchers said in January.
They found Ardern faced online vitriol at a rate between 50 and 90 times higher than any other high-profile figure - in 92% of the total body of posts mentioning a selected group of leading politicians and bureaucrats, of mixed genders.
Of the posts classified as strongly negative, angry, sexually explicit or toxic, those mentioning Ardern made up 93% of the total (5438 posts).
Offline, posters likened her to farm animals, or called for her execution.
.
.
“I suspect history will judge her as being one of the most outstanding prime ministers. In 10 years or 50 years the general consensus will be very positive about her,” Spoonley says.
Historian Michael Belgrave of Massey University won’t be rushed into a decision. It’s too early to say, he offers.
"She's been our most significant prime minister in promoting New Zealand's name, its position and its values, she defined them foremost in that international arena, and I don't think anyone did it so well across such a range of things as she did,” he says.
“Her election victory in 2020, is one of the biggest political achievements of any government going to re-election, especially in an MMP era.”
Belgrave has a book tentatively titled Us: A History of New Zealand coming out in 2023, with one theme being the extent to which Kiwis have trusted the state, our politicians and how deeply rooted that is in our history.
“This trust has been threatened in the past, and unfortunately, in the very recent past,” he says.
“Over our whole history, you've got Peter Fraser, who was heavily involved in the development of the UN and the International Declaration of Human Rights, but it's very much backroom stuff.
“You've got David Lange in his anti-nuclear, 'I can smell the uranium on your breath' public phase but Jacinda transcended all of that.”
In January Ardern called it quits as PM, this week she waves goodbye to life as an MP.
.
Popular posts from this blog
βππ¨ β€ππππππ'π€ πππ€ π π‘ππππ πππππ πππ₯ππ£πππ₯ππ πππ π£ππ‘π¦π₯ππ₯ππ π, π₯πππππ€ π₯π πππππππ πΈπ£πππ£π
For Black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business
Fact Check: Trump lied 46 times at recent rallies
Comments
Post a Comment