¡Enhorabuena! Es la pera, es la mejor… ¡Qué pena que no contemos con este tipo de líderes políticos en España!
Angela Merkel Is Time's Person Of 2015
When Time magazine announced the short list of its Persons of the Year for 2015, there was some consternation that the winner could be ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi or, maybe even worse according to the US press, Donald Trump. Instead, according to the just announced final results, the two gentlemen are in positions #2 and #3 respectively, with the winner being Germany's iron chancellor, Angela Merkel, whose position however in the aftermath of Europe's historic refugee crisis, has been downgraded from "iron" to quite shaky in recent weeks.
Here is Time's logic:
Europe’s most powerful leader is a refugee from a time and place where her power would have been unimaginable. The German Democratic Republic, where Angela Merkel grew up, was neither democratic nor a republic; it was an Orwellian horror show, where the Iron Curtain found literal expression in the form of the Berlin Wall. The shy daughter of a Lutheran minister, Merkel slipped into politics as a divorced Protestant in a largely Catholic party, a woman in a frat house, an Ossi in the newly unified Germany of the 1990s where easterners were still aliens. No other major Western leader grew up in a stockade, which gave Merkel a rare perspective on the lure of freedom and the risks people will take to taste it.
Her political style was not to have one; no flair, no flourishes, no charisma, just a survivor’s sharp sense of power and a scientist’s devotion to data. Even after Merkel became Germany’s Chancellor in 2005, and then commanded the world’s fourth largest economy, she remained resolutely dull—the better to be underestimated time and again. German pundits called her Merkelvellian when she outsmarted, isolated or just outlasted anyone who might mount a challenge to her. Ever cautious, she proudly practiced what Willy Brandt once called Die Politik der kleinen Schritte (the politics of baby steps), or as we call it in the U.S., leading from behind.
Then came 2015. Not once or twice but three times this year there has been reason to wonder whether Europe could continue to exist, not culturally or geographically but as a historic experiment in ambitious statecraft. Merkel had already emerged as the indispensable player in managing Europe’s serial debt crises; she also led the West’s response to Vladimir Putin’s creeping theft of Ukraine. But now the prospect of Greek bankruptcy threatened the very existence of the euro zone. The migrant and refugee crisis challenged the principle of open borders. And finally, the carnage in Paris revived the reflex to slam doors, build walls and trust no one.
Each time Merkel stepped in. Germany would bail Greece out, on her strict terms. It would welcome refugees as casualties of radical Islamist savagery, not carriers of it. And it would deploy troops abroad in the fight against ISIS. Germany has spent the past 70 years testing antidotes to its toxically nationalist, militarist, genocidal past. Merkel brandished a different set of values—humanity, generosity, tolerance—to demonstrate how Germany’s great strength could be used to save, rather than destroy. It is rare to see a leader in the process of shedding an old and haunting national identity. “If we now have to start apologizing for showing a friendly face in response to emergency situations,” she said, “then that’s not my country.”
And so this time, the woman who trained as a quantum chemist did not run the tests and do the lab work; she made her stand. The blowback has come fast and from all sides. Donald Trump called Merkel “insane” and called the refugees “one of the great Trojan horses.” German protesters called her a traitor, a whore; her allies warned of a popular revolt, and her opponents warned of economic collapse and cultural suicide. The conservative Die Welt published a leaked intelligence report warning about the challenge of assimilating a million migrants: “We are importing Islamic extremism, Arab anti-Semitism, national and ethnic conflicts of other people as well as a different understanding of society and law.” Her approval ratings dropped more than 20 points, even as she broadcast her faith in her people: “Wir schaffen das,” she has said over and over. “We can do this.”
At a moment when much of the world is once more engaged in a furious debate about the balance between safety and freedom, the Chancellor is asking a great deal of the German people, and by their example, the rest of us as well. To be welcoming. To be unafraid. To believe that great civilizations build bridges, not walls, and that wars are won both on and off the battlefield. By viewing the refugees as victims to be rescued rather than invaders to be repelled, the woman raised behind the Iron Curtain gambled on freedom. The pastor’s daughter wielded mercy like a weapon. 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.
Y sobre todo, muchas gracias!!!. Gracias por permitir, por dar cobijo, por alimentar, por encontrar trabajo a más de un millón de refugiados sirios, es lo que ya han entrado por sus fronteras en lo que llevamos de 2015. Los buenos dirigentes mundiales sirven para este tipo de retos. Mil gracias y enhorabuena. Pasará a la historia como uno de los mejores políticos del mundo, muy pocos lo consiguen nunca… Abrazos,
PD1: Ese racismo que se mantiene en nuestra sociedad, ese mirar mal a los que no son como nosotros, a los negros, a los musulmanes, a los gitanos, a los refugiados… Lo tenemos metido dentro y es malo, muy cruel.
En todas las conversaciones que puedo saco el tema de ayudar a los refugiados sirios y me desespero, nadie quiere hacer nada: les da miedo que entren terroristas, les da miedo el efecto llamada a otros países africanos. Si esa pobre gente no puede hacer más que huir de Siria…, ¡caramba!
¿A qué esperamos para acoger refugiados? ¿Estamos tontos o qué? Somos unos egoístas y Alemania nos está dando un gran ejemplo del buen hacer, de solidaridad, de grandes valores, de eficacia, como siempre… ¡Ay de la España católica, ay!
