Waatea News Column: The Queen is dead, long live the Queen
The Queen is dead, long live the Queen
It is with a deeply heavy heart that many of us return to election year 2023 after Jacinda Ardern’s surprise resignation.
It’s not just that she resigned, it’s the reason why she felt she had to resign.
While Jacinda Ardern will never acknowledge the toxic hatred spat at her as the reason she is stepping down, you only get burnt out as badly as she has when abuse and threats are an ongoing reality.
It is sickening that someone with as much passion, empathy and kindness is left with nothing left to give.
As a Prime Minister she saved us from a mass death event like Covid and she led with courage during the terrorist attack while becoming a symbol of a different kind of leadership.
Jacinda made kindness, empathy and compassion political strengths in a male dominated culture without losing any authority.
Every woman who is important to me stands 2 inches taller thanks to Jacinda’s leadership. I’ve seen her impact on my Daughter and her friends and I rejoice at the new horizons Jacinda set for the next generation.
Jacinda’s staunch support of Māori saw a new National Holiday, the revitalisation of te Reo and most importantly over the last 5 years saw $3.5Billion in extra funding for Māori!
There were many policy disappointments however. Governing is very different from winning an election and the lack of real transformative change hasn’t helped our community and whanau as well as we had all hoped.
And that’s the true sadness of Jacinda’s time as Prime Minister, there was so much potential and promise in her leadership that didn’t live up to the service provided.
Child Poverty, meaningful environmental policy, mental health, crime, Housing and Social Housing all remain issues to solve as the country plunges into an economic recession.
Jacinda, Clarke and Neve have earned the privacy they should now be given and the rest of us should be forced to reflect how our public debate has turned so toxic.
Criticism of policy and politicians is fine and healthy in a democracy, naked malice, spite, threats and abuse however are tools that kill off a democracy.
Jacinda couldn’t do it all but she will be forever remembered for trying.
Kia kaha Jacinda.
First published on Waatea News.
Jacinda had COVID, which could be factored into her resignation too, it can hit some people very hard in the cognition department.
Jacinda was a captive of a bygone political persuasion–Blairism–and just did not have the ideological power, or class understanding to promote retiring Rogernomics from our national political scene. But, I really liked her anyway, for the reasons Martyn states.
Go well Arden/Gayfords.
When you don’t/won’t listen, when you “know better”, when you push aside democratic processes, sometimes that upsets people & they get angry.
Martyn you’re peddling fiction.
https://theplatform.kiwi/opinions/the-martyrdom-of-jacinda-ardern
Jacinda Ardern and her family are entitled to their privacy and have earned our respect.
Well said. I enjoyed reading this article.
@Neil
Not an unusual event. Time he read Robert Kennedy Jnr.’s book ‘The Real Anthony Fauci.’ About time everyone who is able to read made the attempt to read a thoroughly informative, very well referenced book on the history of pharmaceutical companies, individual players like Fauci and Bill Gates and their experimental activities on African women and children and Hispanic and Black children in American orphanages. The book deals extensively with the many vaccine and drug failures, the vastness of the funding and profiteering and the off loading of failed medications onto unsuspecting African countries.
Early last year the local library had twenty copies of this book with about 120 requests for the first returned copy so I bought the book and am reading it for the second time.
The shutting down of all information and discussion on the pandemic, the possible ways of treating it and of legitimate concerns about the safety of an entirely new technology was for me the most heinous aspect of the sorry Covid saga. Kennedy’s book goes a long way towards explaining what the world wide shut down of opinion and understanding was really all about. Read it and be truly horrified.
Archonblatter. View Pfizer’s CEO at Davos continually refusing to speak about when they knew that their experimental vaccine would not stop the spread of coronavirus; Canada’s Rebel News.
It is always good to be wise after the event and not in a position where anger can be dumped on you.
Also beware of fusion opinion; that’s where in the general mix of condemnation, crisis and misinformation, truths are sprinkled through like high-scoring chillis, carefully measured out so they bite in just the right amount for the argument. So I don’t accept everything that some apparently informed person says; think how ex-Prince Harry is being disbelieved .
Is that the same Kennedy that backed the criminal Dr Wakefield in his attempt to stop people getting the MMR vaccine
Boy the natact moron troll patrol is out in force today.
You have the only comment so far that relates to the real world, the others appear to have their head where the sun doesn’t shine then wonder why the world is a smelly place.
Jacinda was a politican that is all she has known for years .To last as long as she has at the top you need to believe in yourself and your message .I believe she started to see that she was not getting the message across so felt the right direction was to step down .She is to be applauded for this move as both her party and her country was becoming more divided by the day .
A new leader could bring a new style and reset on some of the more contentious issues. Hipkins was a good choice not so sure about Sepuloni.
Oh my bad, I thought you were writing about Titewhai Harawira who has passed two days ago – may she rest in peace and her family whanau be comforted and nourished by her memory and legacy. “I have got about seventy mokopuna, and every one of them are precious to me.” https://www.teaomaori.news/titewhai-harawira-dies-aged-90
Now that’s a queen.