What political leaders should learn from New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern
By Jean-Pierre Charbonneau, President of the Mouvement Démocratie Nouvelle in Quebec
[DemocracySOS welcomes as a guest contributor Jean-Pierre Charbonneau, President of the Mouvement Démocratie Nouvelle, which campaigns for the introduction of a proportional voting system in Quebec. Monsieur Charbonneau is a former elected member of the National Assembly of Quebec where he served as President of the National Assembly, and the former Minister for the Reform of Democratic Institutions in Quebec. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including being named as an Officer of the National Order of Quebec by the Prime Minister of Quebec. Canadian political scientist Henry Milner, who worked with Jean-Pierre Charbonneau on the English version of the original article, is posting this on behalf of Jean-Pierre.]
Former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, who recently stepped away from politics, followed a career path that was exemplary and inspiring in many ways. Free people everywhere should thank her for her candor, her authenticity, her transparency, her lucidity and her humanity. Her noble exit from the stage at a time when her position was unchallenged, concluding that she had made her contribution and that it was time to move on, was another expression of her approach to leadership, one that the world needs a lot more of. She should also be praised and, above all, seen as a model, for her very democratic way of exercising power.
Ms. Ardern first served as Prime Minister in a coalition government under the mixed member proportional (MMP) system in her country, which had the audacity -- unlike Canada or the United States -- to scrap the old British first-past-the-post electoral system. With MMP, voters get two votes – one for their district representative and a second for the party they wish to represent them in parliament. It results in multi-party representation and broad representation of the electorate. It was the people of New Zealand in a referendum who made that decision to use MMP, despite the opposition of the major parties. And in a second referendum, after seeing MMP play out in several elections, they voted to keep it.
Ms. Ardern’s leadership of the coalition government with the opposition Green Party was so effective that Ms. Ardern won the next election with a majority of seats. That’s a real feat in a multiparty system in which parties are elected by a proportional representation electoral system.
Following the election, everyone expected that her party, the Labour Party, would take the opportunity to govern alone since it had elected sufficient members of parliament to do so. However, against all expectations, Ms. Ardern chose to maintain the political coalition with the Greens.
What audacity, what an example for the rest of us. Her willingness to collaborate, even when she did not need to, was inspired by a principled understanding of representative democracy and the exercise of power.
What a message for opportunists, cynics and autocrats everywhere.
Can we imagine such an open-minded attitude here in Quebec, where Prime Minister Francois Legault’s CAQ won 90 of 125 seats with only 41 percent of the vote in a first-past-the-post system? Legault rejected calls to share power in any way with the other parties, which between them won 59% of the vote, all the while reneging on his promises made over and over again for seven years.
Despite many analysts and commentators arguing cynically that it is naive to say that politics can be done differently, the example of New Zealand is proof that they are wrong. It is also proof that a political culture of hating opponents can be replaced by a culture of collaboration and consensus-seeking. Noble ideals, defended and implemented by honest and courageous people, can overturn centuries-old and outdated expectations and relationships.
Of course, political rivalries still exist in New Zealand. But the proportional representation electoral system allows people to think and act differently, more in line with the democratic ideal that promotes not only the respect of the will of the popular majority but also aims at widening this majority as much as possible, so that the maximum number of citizens feel involved in the governance of the State.
Yes, thank you, Ms. Ardern, for this great lesson in democracy amidst these turbulent times, where populism and autocracy are increasingly taking their toll.