New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said she will quit ahead of this year’s election.
At a news briefing on Thursday, 42-year-old Ardern said she no longer has “enough in the tank” to lead.
She choked up as she detailed how six “challenging” years in the 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.
Ardern will step down by 7 February.
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If no would-be successor garners the support of two-thirds of the party room, the vote will go to Labour’s lay membership.
Jacinda 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.
(Editor: Oloyede Oworu)
