NZ PM echoes Benazir Bhutto's call to deepen democracy

CAMBRIDGE: New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern has used her Harvard University Commencement address to speak out against the “scourge of disinformation” and echo former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s call to deepen democracy.

Ardern was honoured by the prestigious US university 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 invoked the memory of the late Benazir Bhutto, the first woman to head a democratic government in a Muslim country, and to give birth while in office with Ardern being the second. Seven months after the two women met Bhutto was assassinated, Ardern said.

“The path she carved as a woman feels as relevant today as it was decades ago, and so too is the message she shared here,” Ardern said.

“She said part way through her speech in 1989 the following: ‘We must realise that democracy… can be fragile’. “… while the reasons that gave rise for her words then were vastly different, they still ring true. Democracy can be fragile.”

She received a rapturous reception as she spoke of New Zealand’s gun law reform and abortion decriminalisation – two controversial issues in the United States.

Ardern’s address was built around the need for democratic systems and informed debate, invoking the same plea from Ms 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,” 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. But that takes so much for granted.”

Ardern has walked a similar path to Bhutto. the pair were the first two female heads of government to give birth while in office, Ardern doing so on Bhutto’s birthday.

The pair met in Switzerland in June 2007, just before Ardern’s election to parliament and seven months before Bhutto was assassinated. 

Ardern updated Bhutto’s call for the 21st century, taking aim at online disinformation and calling on tech companies to do more to stop online conspiracy theories being spread, which can radicalise.

“The time has come for social media companies and other online providers to recognise their power and to act on it,” she said.

She finished her speech with a call for kindness, and to bridge differences with others. “What we do as individuals in these spaces matters,” she said. “We are the richer for our difference, and poorer for our division.”

She received a standing ovation when she said the government had succeeded in banning military-style semi-automatics and assault rifles in the wake of the Christchurch mosque attacks.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s addressing speech at 2022 Harvard commencement. Tribute to Prime Minister Shaheed Benazir Bhutto by the Prime Minister of New Zealand jacinda Ardern ❤👏 pic.twitter.com/4Vw5mW8DBS

— Zobia Khurshid Raja (@ZobiaKhurshid) May 27, 2022