Angela Merkel named Time’s ‘Person of the Year’
Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi comes second; Trump, placed third, derides choice of ‘person who is ruining Germany’
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NEW YORK — German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been named Time’s Person of the Year, praised by the magazine for her leadership on everything from Syrian refugees to the Greek debt crisis.
Time also cited Merkel’s strong response to “Vladimir Putin’s creeping theft of Ukraine.”
Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was runner up, followed by US presidential candidate Donald Trump.
“Leaders are tested only when people don’t want to follow,” Time editor Nancy Gibbs said in a statement issued Wednesday. “For asking more of her country than most politicians would dare, for standing firm against tyranny as well as expedience and for providing steadfast moral leadership in a world where it is in short supply, Angela Merkel is TIME’s Person of the Year.”
Merkel, 61, is just the fourth woman since 1927 to be chosen and the first since opposition leader Corazon C. Aquino of the Philippines in 1986. She is the first German since Willy Brandt, the West German chancellor named in 1970 for “seeking to bring about a fresh relationship between East and West” during the Cold War. In 1999, Time picked the German-born Albert Einstein as Person of the Century.
The seven other finalists for 2015 included Trump, al-Baghdadi, the Black Lives Matter protest movement and Uber’s CEO, Travis Kalanick. Trump promptly tweeted his derision at the choice.
I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite They picked person who is ruining Germany
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2015
Time has selected a “person of the year” (man of the year until 1999) since 1927 though a secretive process involving the magazine’s senior editors.
Readers are also invited to vote for who they believe should be “person of the year” in an online poll but the results appear to have no sway in the final selection. In this year’s readers’ poll, US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was voted person of the year, with Merkel coming only in 10th place — just ahead of British songstress Adele.
The Times of Israel Community.