German Chancellor Angela Merkel was praised and named Time's Person
of the Year on Wednesday, 9th December, 2015.
The Time magazine named Merkel for her leadership on
everything from Syrian refugees to the Greek debt crisis. It also cited
Merkel's strong response to "Vladimir Putin's creeping theft of Ukraine" and on its cover called her
"Chancellor of the Free World."
"Not once or twice but three times there has been reason
to wonder this year whether Europe could continue to exist, not culturally or
geographically but as a historic experiment in ambitious statecraft," Time
editor Nancy Gibbs wrote. "You can agree with her or not, but she is not
taking the easy road. Leaders are tested only when people don't want to follow.
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 news was revealed as Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert
was leading a government press
conference in the German capital, while Merkel
herself was at an event in Leipzig. When asked by a media source about it, Seibert
said he had only just received word on his phone himself.
"I'm sure the chancellor will regard this as an
encouragement for her political work, for a good future for Germany as well as
for Europe," Seibert said.
Not everyone welcomed Merkel's selection. She has been
criticized for demanding unduly harsh terms for Greece as the country struggled
to pay its debts and remain on the euro. Maria Dimopoulou, a public sector
worker in Greece, said that Merkel "may be woman of the year for Europe
and the world in general but for Greece she is disaster of the year and all of
the past years."
Another dissenter, for different reasons, was Donald Trump.
He was a finalist for Person of the Year and for months has topped Republican
polls for the 2016 U.S. presidential election and dominated headlines.
The other candidates for 2015 were Caitlyn
Jenner, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the Black Lives Matter protest
movement, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.
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