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Election winner Jacinda Ardern
Photo: David Rowland / AAP / REUTERS
47,000 spectators sang and hooted in the largest sports stadium in Auckland, New Zealand, when the domestic All Blacks sent the rugby national team from Australia home with a heavy defeat.
That was in mid-October, the day after the general election.
And the fact alone that tens of thousands of people were able to buy tickets during the corona pandemic to celebrate their rugby team without a mask on their faces explains the result of this election pretty well.
Jacinda Ardern not only won, she triumphed.
The head of government, who fought the virus down in good time before the election, is finally a global superstar, a woman whom the remote Pacific state with its five million inhabitants is envied.
"America deserves political leadership as good as Jacinda Ardern"
Editorial of the "New York Times"
So far, her reputation outside New Zealand has been higher than at home.
All over the western world, many in the left-green spectrum dreamed of having someone like her at the top.
"America deserves political leadership that is as good as Jacinda Ardern," the New York Times headlined an editorial last year.
Now her own nation has also taken the Social Democrat to her heart.
In Wellington's Parliament, Ardern's Labor Party has 64 seats out of 120, 18 more than in the previous election.
Nobody has been able to rule the country with an absolute majority since 1951.
The New Zealand First populists, on whom Ardern was dependent in a three-way alliance with the Greens during the last legislative period, disappeared into oblivion with 2.6 percent of the vote.
Ardern seems to effortlessly combine work and family
But although the 40-year-old party and government leader could now take full power, she relied on cooperation.
Immediately after the election, she wooed the Greens and began negotiations with the aim of continuing the cooperation.
“We can use their strengths,” she said.
Ardern approaching others without being forced to do so is a rare variant in the political strategy game: giving up power in order to secure power.
There will be no formal coalition, as has been established today, but the Greens will have two ministerial posts, one for climate change and the other for preventing domestic and sexual violence.
Ardern also set an example with the appointment of Nanaia Mahuta as Foreign Minister.
Mahuta got a traditional Maori tattoo on his face four years ago.
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Nanaia Mahuta, then Minister for Maori Development, in February with Prime Minister Ardern
Photo: BIANCA DE MARCHI / AFP
Right at the beginning of the talks, Ardern rejected the green wish for a tax on the wealthy, but it was clear that the overlaps in climate protection are great.
In her private life, Ardern, who has a two-year-old daughter with her partner, has been driving an electric car for a long time.
This week it became known that three Audi e-tron 55s are to be purchased as official cars for the government, one of them with a child seat.
When she took over the leadership of her party in 2017, things didn't look good for Labor.
Seven weeks before the election, the Social Democrats were well behind the National Party in the polls, which also received the most votes.
Nevertheless, Ardern managed to replace the Conservative-led government.
Social justice, housing and environmental protection in the face of climate change were her main themes.
However, it was not the factual issues that shaped her image, but her public appearances and the way in which she apparently effortlessly managed to combine work and family.
After the birth of her daughter in June 2018, she took six weeks of parental leave before continuing to work.
The pictures they showed with the three-month-old Neve during the UN General Assembly in New York went around the world.
Half a year later, on March 15, 2019, an armed man marched into a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand and shot those praying.
Then he drove to a second mosque and shot again there.
51 people died; the racist bomber was sentenced to life imprisonment in August this year.
When all eyes turned on the Prime Minister after the mass murder, she did just the right thing.
She put a towel over her hair, hugged relatives of the victims and said about the immigrants to New Zealand: “They are us” - they belong to us.
In appearances like after the Christchuch assassination, she appears empathetic, in her communication she appears approachable and direct.
At the right moment, too, she has three or four-word sentences ready that stick.
“Go hard, go early” became their motto during the corona pandemic: attack the virus hard and early.
“Tomorrow we start”, she said after her election victory.
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After the Christchurch attack in March 2019, Ardern donated consolation
Photo: Jorge Silva / REUTERS
Jacinda Ardern was one of the people who caught the eye while she was still at school.
In the 12th grade she was elected Head Girl, until then the older 13th grade had usually taken over this task.
After a year she was re-elected.
She ensured that the girls were allowed to go to school in shorts just like the boys and that it was no longer an obligation for students to tuck their shirts into their pants.
John Inger runs the school from which Ardern graduated.
He looks friendly into the camera of his computer, behind him is a pennant from the school team.
In a conversation about his former student it quickly becomes clear: Inger is a fan. She is “very, very creative”, “very eloquent” and “very clever”.
For the yearbook of their senior year, as in many school leavers, they asked what would become of whom.
On page ten it says: “Who is most likely to be Prime Minister?” The answer: Jacinda Ardern.
When asked about this later, she said that she was the only one who was interested in politics at the time.
When it comes to election promises, she lagged behind the announcements
Despite everything, the first term in office was not easy for her.
During New Zealand's three-year legislature, she fell short of announcements on several election promises.
Housing construction made slow progress, and child poverty in the country is still a long way from being eliminated.
Three quarters of a year ago, Ardern's Social Democrats were well behind the National Party in polls, and a loss of power would not have been a surprise.
Then the coronavirus spread across the world.
Under Ardern's leadership, the nation sealed itself off and a graduated lockdown was imposed.
At the beginning of June, when the infection rate had been nearing zero for a while, the government lifted all restrictions, with the exception of entry bans.
The New Zealanders were now practically living on corona-free islands again.
However, the virus returned, and a cluster with 179 Covid-19 cases broke open in Auckland in August.
In line with Ardern's motto “go hard, go early”, the country reacted with renewed restrictions - a strategy that paid off a second time.
The last restrictions ended in early October, two weeks before the election.
All over the country people can party again, go to the theater or go to rugby.
A newly appointed minister for the fight against Covid-19 is now to coordinate all measures against a flare-up of infections.
She is patriotic and at the same time thinks beyond borders
After the overwhelming victory, the expectations of the new and old heads of government have not decreased.
On the evening of the election, Ardern signaled that she understood: she and her party were “absolutely and completely focused on New Zealand”.
Your compatriots appreciate patriotic tones.
She also indicated that Ardern thinks beyond national borders.
“We live in an increasingly polarized world,” she said, “more and more people have lost the ability to understand the point of view of others”.
She wanted to show: “We are not like that.” With sentences like this she reaches many hearts, not only in New Zealand.
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