Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on 17th August to change the election date of 19th September to 17th October and stressed that she will not change the election date again. The community outbreak of Covid-19 in Auckland forced the political parties to suspend their election campaigning and prompted calls to postpone the general election dates.

Jacinda Ardern was under pressure from her coalition partner NZ First’s Winston Peters, opposition National Party and other parties to make it a fair election. Hence it became inevitable to change the election date as most parties believed that due to Covid-19 restrictions in Auckland political parties would not get enough time for the electioneering. After the announcement of the new election date the Prime Minister reiterated that Covid is the new normal in the world now and we will need to learn to live with it. She further said that the date she chose was her own decision and that she would be sticking to the date of 17th October. Though, she said, she reached out to few people to seek their views on this and the general view was that some form of delay was warranted.

As per reports, even the Election commission was planning a range of options since last few months including holding elections at country being at alert Level 2 or even some parts of country being at alert Level 3. Prime Minister wanted to delay elections by two weeks only, but Election Commission advised her that any change of date will require Election Commission at least four weeks’ time to make all necessary arrangements like informing all voters about the change and rebooking voting venues. Jacinda discussed with different political parties and took both her coalition partners in confidence before making the announcement and said that while deciding to change the date, she wanted a sense of fairness and a sense of comfort for the voters that this will be a safe election. In New Zealand, under the law once the Parliament is dissolved and if the Election Commission believes that they cannot hold a safe or fair election, they have the power to move the date.

All political parties obliviously welcomed the government’s decision of changing the election dates and gave indication of business as usual for them. Their will not be any relaunching of any election campaigning and no hoardings will be brought down to put them back later as these elections are being held in some very extraordinary circumstances. The parliament is scheduled to reconvene on 18th August to dissolve on 6th September. The new last date to file nominations is now 13th September and the advance voting will start from 3rd of October. With this postponement, all the parties can now prepare to begin campaigning again and this time they will be confident that they have got enough time and resources to engage in a free and fair elections.

While the demand of parties like National Party, NZ First and others has been met by moving the date to enable them to do 100% electioneering, NZ’s Health Minister Chris Hipkins says these elections are still not going to be risk free elections. The Election Commission is prepared to conduct elections even in alert Level 2 if situation arise, but Minister says voter’s safety and wellbeing is paramount for the government. All parties seem to set now to take full advantage of prevalent situation in their own ways, while for Labour Party, elections held earlier will be an advantage for them.

Elections will come and go but any party winning this election should to prepared to move the mountain of bringing the derailed economy back to track. The new government will need to find new sources of employment and at the same time take care of general prosperity and wellbeing of the people of New Zealand.

-Yugal Parashar