Personality of the Year 2014 on RRI

Radio Romania International continued its end-of-year traditional survey among shortwave listeners, Internet and social media users and challenged you to an exercise that, we hope, you found provoking.

România Internațional, 31.12.2014, 18:17

You were invited to tell us which of today’s personalities you believe has left the most significant positive mark on the world in 2014.

Among the politicians whom you nominated for the title “Personality of the Year 2014 on RRI” are Romania’s newly elected president, Klaus Iohannis, the Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Chinese head of state, Xi Jinping, the former King of Spain, Juan Carlos I, the Lithuanian president, Dalia Grybauskaite, the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, Ukraines Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and the German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Also nominated by RRI’s short-wave listeners, Internet and social media users were the medical staff and missioners fighting against Ebola in West Africa, Pope Francis, the Romanian tennis player Simona Halep, the German-French journalist Peter Scholl-Latour, the French economist Tomas Piketty and the Cuban-Venezuelan actress, singer and activist Maria Conchita Alonso, who is now living in California and is fighting for democracy in her countries of origin.

However, the Personality of the Year 2014 on RRI is a human rights activist, the 17-year old Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, a 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner alongside India’s children’s rights campaigner, Kailash Satyarthy.

“This young woman is an inspiration for all women who live in certain countries where women cannot learn as they wish. Malala is a model and an inspiration for them. No wonder she received the Nobel Peace Prize.” This is how RRI’s listener Adrian Micaleff of Malta motivated his nomination of Malala Yousafzai as “Personality of the Year 2014 on RRI”.