The charismatic former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who resigned by surprise almost a year ago and a few months after her party lost power, married this Saturday in New Zealand with her partner and father of her daughter, the journalist Clarke Gayford.
The intimate wedding, which was delayed two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic and attended primarily by the couple’s relatives, took place in an intimate setting in the vineyards of Hawke’s Bay, in the northeast of the country.
According to the photos of the wedding, Ardern, 43, appeared at the ceremony in a long wedding dress and her husband, 47, in a black suit and a tie of the same color and both walked among the estate’s vineyards. .
The couple has maintained silence about the details of the wedding, but in a small country of 5 million inhabitants, the local media knew in advance the place and even the time of the wedding.
Near the wedding, a handful of anti-vaccines gathered to protest against the former president, whose government applied harsh restriction measures against the pandemic.
Ardern and Gayford had a daughter in 2018 and had planned to marry in 2022, but the pandemic disrupted their plans.
The former president exhibited great empathy and determination in her management after the 2019 supremacist attack that caused 51 deaths in two mosques in Christchurch and later with the forceful measures during the covid-19 pandemic.
The media coined the term “jacindamania” to explain the wave of admiration caused among young people and citizens.
The restrictions made New Zealand one of the countries least affected by Covid-19, but they also negatively affected the economy and made it difficult for thousands of New Zealanders to return to their country.
On January 19, 2023, the former president presented her resignation in a surprising manner, alleging exhaustion and at a time when her party, the Labor Party, had been falling for weeks in voting intention polls.
In fact, the conservative National Party won the elections last October and its leader, Christopher Luxon, became prime minister at the head of a three-party coalition.
After leaving politics, Ardern started several programs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School in the United States on leadership and online extremism.