New Zealand’s parliamentary elections are postponed for four weeks due to a return of the coronavirus pandemic, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Monday.
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The elections, which were to take place on September 19, are postponed until October 17.
“This decision gives all parties time to campaign over the next nine weeks and gives the Election Commission enough time to ensure that an election can go ahead,” Mr.me Ardern.
The center-left prime minister was under pressure to postpone the date of the elections since all parties suspended their campaigns due to the return of the pandemic recorded last week and whose origin remains unknown.
New Zealand is recently faced with a resumption of contaminations which has led to a new containment of Auckland, the largest city in the country.
Mme Ardern on Friday ordered the containment of Auckland until August 26 to prevent a second wave of COVID-19.
The Prime Minister acknowledged that there was great anxiety in the country over the return of the virus, which was detected in four people in Auckland last Tuesday. On Sunday, the outbreak spotted in this city reached 49 confirmed cases.
Mme Ardern said she spent the weekend consulting with party leaders and the Election Commission on the date of the election.
She said the postponement meant all parties would campaign on the same terms and she would not change the new October 17 date regardless of the situation.
“I have absolutely no intention of changing that,” she insisted.
Mme Ardern ranks very well in the polls, with a record popularity rate of some 60% which it owes to its handling of the pandemic and its responses to the Christchurch mosque bombing last year and to the volcanic eruption of White Island.
His Labor Party is in a position to win the election on its own, without the help of the small parties with which it was in coalition during the coming legislature.