New Zealand PM to step down next month

Jacinda Ardern has announced she will quit as New Zealand prime minister ahead of this year's election, saying she no longer has "enough in the tank" to lead.

Ms Ardern choked up as she detailed how six "challenging" years in the job had taken a toll. Labour Party MPs will vote to find her replacement on Sunday. The shock announcement comes as polling indicates the party faces a difficult path to re-election on 14 October.

Ms Ardern, 42, said she had taken time to consider her future over the summer break, hoping to find the heart and energy to go on in the role. “But unfortunately I haven't, and I would be doing a disservice to New Zealand to continue," she told reporters on Thursday.

Ms Ardern will step down by 7 February. If no would-be successor garners the support of two-thirds of the party room, the vote will go to Labour's lay membership. Ms Ardern became the youngest female head of government in the world when she was elected prime minister in 2017, aged 37.

And a year later she became the second elected world leader to ever give birth while in office, after Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto in 1990. She steered New Zealand through the Covid-19 pandemic and its ensuing recession, the Christchurch mosque shootings, and the White Island volcanic eruption.

Ms Ardern said the past five-and-a-half years had been the "most fulfilling" of her life, but leading the country during "crisis" had been difficult. "These events... have been taxing because of the weight, the sheer weight and continual nature of them. There's never really been a moment where it's ever felt like we were just governing."

Ms Ardern listed her government's achievements on climate change, social housing and reducing child poverty as ones she was particularly proud of. But she said she hoped her legacy in New Zealand would be "as someone who always tried to be kind". "I hope I leave New Zealanders with a belief that you can be kind, but strong, empathetic but decisive, optimistic but focused. And that you can be your own kind of leader - one who knows when it's time to go," she said.

( Source BBC)