Ardern pays glowing tribute to the late Benazir Bhutto
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has used her Harvard University Commencement address to speak out against the “scourge of disinformation” and echo former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s call to deepen democracy.
Ms Ardern was honoured by the storied US university on Thursday, when she addressed more than a thousand students from the same stage offered to leaders of nations and industry including Winston Churchill, Angela Merkel, Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey.
She received a rapturous reception as she spoke of New Zealand’s gun law reform and abortion decriminalisation – two hot-button issues in the United States.
Ms Ardern’s address was built around the need for democratic systems and informed debate, invoking the same plea from Benazir Bhutto, who underscored the “fragility” of democracy in her own 1989 address at the university.
“This imperfect but precious way that we organise ourselves, that has been created to give equal voice to the weak and to the strong, that is designed to help drive consensus – it is fragile,” Ms Ardern said. “For years it feels as though we have assumed that the fragility of democracy was determined by duration. “That somehow the strength of your democracy was like a marriage; the longer you’d been in it, the more likely it was to stick.
Ms Ardern has walked a similar path to Ms Bhutto; the pair were the first two female heads of government to give birth while in office, Ms Ardern doing so on Ms Bhutto’s birthday. ”INP
