New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will not run for re-election and plans to step down no later than early February, she said in a televised statement on Thursday.
A general election will be held on October 14, she added.
“This summer I was hoping to find a way to prepare not just for another year, but for another term — because that’s what this year calls for,” a visibly emotional Ardern said during the statement. “I failed to do that.”
Ardern’s term will end no later than February 7.
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Ardern said she believed her New Zealand Labor Party would win the upcoming election and added that a vote to elect the next Labor leader would take place on Sunday.
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New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson, who is also finance minister, said in a statement that he would not seek to be the next Labor leader.
Ardern served two terms as Prime Minister and became a popular leader on the world stage.
“I’m entering my sixth year in office, and for each of those years I’ve given my best,” she said Thursday, fighting back tears. She described the job as a privilege but admitted it was a challenging role.
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“But I’m not going to leave because it’s been hard,” she said. “If that was the case, I’d probably be out of work for two months.”
3:03 Jacinda Ardern wins landslide re-election in New Zealand
Ardern’s zero-tolerance response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which closed New Zealand’s borders for months, was initially praised by local and international politicians and health experts and helped her win re-election in a historic landslide victory in 2020.
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But recent polls have put her party behind its conservative rivals amid growing criticism at home that the strategy is too tough. The approach was abandoned after it was challenged by new variants and vaccines became available.
Strict restrictions on social gatherings in New Zealand, which were briefly re-introduced to combat the transmissible variant Omicron, even forced Ardern to postpone her own wedding early last year.
In December, Ardern announced that a Royal Commission of Inquiry would look into whether the government had made the right decisions in the fight against COVID-19 and how it could better prepare for future pandemics. The report is due next year.
With files from Global News and Associated Press
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