Personality of the Year 2015 on RRI

Dear friends, RRI continued its traditional end-of-the-year polling of listeners on short wave, the Internet and social media.

România Internațional, 01.01.2016, 14:22

Dear friends, RRI continued its traditional end-of-the-year polling of listeners on short wave, the Internet and social media. We asked you to tell us which person you think contributed the most, through their actions, attitudes or ideas, to the progress of the world in 2015.

The politicians nominated for Personality of the Year 2015 on RRI included the Russian president Vladimir Putin, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, the French president Francois Hollande, the president of Romania Klaus Iohannis, the former president of Georgia, currently governor of the Odessa region in Ukraine, Mikheil Saakashvili, the Indian and Hungarian prime ministers, Narendra Modi and Viktor Orban respectively, the head of the National League for Democracy in Myanmar, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi.

Other RRI listeners and internet users nominated Pope Francis, the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, winner of the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize, the citizens of Paris who in 2015 were twice subject to terrible Islamist attacks, the Ukrainian volunteers who “take up arms to defend their country” or “all those people, around the world, who have warned against various threats, who had the courage to make their voice heard.” Other nominees from outside the world of politics were, for instance, the Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, the football player Lionel Messi and Ralph Hasenhuttel, the coach of the German football club FC Ingolstadt, which he helped promote in the Bundesliga.

But based on the votes of a majority of the RRI listeners and online users, RRI designated the German Chancellor Angela Merkel as Personality of the Year 2015. Boudoukha Mahomed, from Algeria, nominated Ms. Merkel for “her stand on the refugee crisis and her willingness to receive hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East.” Volodimir Sytnikov, from Ukraine, says that “I was impressed by her confidence that Germany will be able to host 400,000 refugees from the Middle East.” In turn, Salim Khan, from Bangladesh, argued: “I think an excellent choice is the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She is a very modest, but also highly dominant person.” Richard Lemke, from Canada, told us his nomination for Personality of the Year 2015 is also politician Angela Merkel, of Germany, who is now at the forefront of world politics.