“I have no intention at all of changing from this point on,” Jacinda Ardern said
Wellington, New Zealand:
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Monday delayed the upcoming New Zealand elections by four weeks after October 17 after a renewed outbreak of coronavirus hampered the campaign.
Ardern was under pressure from political opponents and their coalition partners to shift the original September 19 vote after COVID-19 was discovered in Auckland last week, sending the country’s largest city into lockdown.
She said returning to the virus after 102 days without community transmission had rattled off Kiwis and could have discouraged some from casting her in a September election.
The center-left leader, who rides high in opinion polls, also acknowledged concerns of rivals that campaigning would unfairly weigh the election in favor of their government.
After consulting with party leaders and the election commission over the weekend, she chose October 17, the earliest delayed date available to her.
Ardern said the change meant all parties would be camping under the same circumstances and that they would not move the date again, regardless of the situation.
“I have no intention at all of changing from this point,” she said.
“This decision gives all parties the next nine weeks to campaign and the Electoral Commission enough time to ensure that an election can go ahead.”
All parties have temporarily halted the campaign in the wake of last week’s outbreak, the source of which remains unknown.
The virus was first discovered last Tuesday in four family members in Auckland and by Sunday, the cluster had grown to 49 confirmed cases.
‘Common sense’
The South Pacific nation is following the same strategy that helped contain coronavirus during a seven-week lockdown earlier this year – isolating positive cases, tracking contacts and extensive testing.
The previous success has helped bring Ardern’s personal popularity rating to a record 60 percent, along with her leadership during the attacks on the Christchurch Mosque and the White Island volcanic eruption.
Ardern’s Labor Party is on track to win office in its own right, without the coalition partners for small parties – the Greens and New Zealand First (NZF) – needing it in the first term.
The main opposition National Party demanded last week that the elections be postponed until late November, preferably next year, and said September 19 was untenable.
Ardern’s coalition partner NZF supported the delay Monday after saying earlier that the September option was “fatally compromised” by the outbreak.
“Common sense has prevailed,” said NZF leader and deputy prime minister Winston Peters, whose populist party has an election wipeout for today’s poll.
Labour’s other coalition partner, the Greens, said the four-week delay should give health authorities time to contain the Auckland cluster.
But co-leader James Shaw accused some parties of displaying “naked political self-interest” in demanding a delay, saying they hoped the economic impact of the pandemic would cover the government’s popularity in the meantime .
“We are incredibly disappointed to see the National and other small parties continue to spend the weekend talking about what would best suit their policies,” he said.
(Except for the header, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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