New York: Time magazine on Wednesday named German Chancellor Angela Merkel its “Person of the Year 2015” and praised 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" and on its cover called her "Chancellor of the Free World."
Hailing her leadership, the magazine said it chose the German Chancellor for the annual honour because her leadership has helped preserve and promote an open, borderless Europe in the face of economic turmoil and an ongoing refugee crisis.
"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.
Wednesday's news came in 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 about it by The Associated Press, 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.
"I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite," he tweeted soon after Time's announcement. "They picked person who is ruining Germany."
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani and Google's India-born CEO Sundar Pichai were among the initial 58 global leaders, business chiefs and pop icons that Time had named as contenders for its annual honour but the three did not make the final shortlist.
Modi, however, did not feature in the list of final eight.
Modi was a contender for the honour last year also and while he was not chosen the Person of the Year by Time editors, he was named winner of the readers' poll, securing more than 16 per cent of the almost five million votes cast.
The other candidates for 2015 were TV celeb Caitlyn Jenner, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the Black Lives Matter protest movement, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.
Time described Baghdadi “as leader of ISIS has inspired followers to both fight in his self-declared caliphate of Iraq and Syria, and also stage attacks in countries like Tunisia and France.”
(With inputs from AP)
