Man of the year 2009

First of all a happy new year to everyone! 2009 was certainly an interesting year. Barack Obama was elected as the first President of color of the United States of America, the G8 was practically replaced by the G20 as the most important forum for global decision-making, and China, India and Brasil have definitely stepped up as future powers on the global stage. But the decade ended nearly as bad as it had started on 9/11/2001. We saw the crisis peak (hopefully) in the summer months of 2009, followed by the UNFCCC failure of Copenhagen which diminished the hopes that humanity will be able to unite in order to face a serious threat to it's future and we saw another attempt at a terrorist attack on US soil on Christmas.

Apart from annual reviews that reflect these major events of each year on TV, the radio, the web and in the newspapers, the compilation of rankings is one of our favorite pastimes at the end of each year. Some of the most popular and influential ones of them present the person of the year. While most of us would probably have guessed that  Barack Obama will become the man of the year if somebody had asked us at the beginning of 2009, his first year in the White House has shown that many people (especially his European admirers) had completely unrealistic expectations. I remember people applauding every sentence that came out of Obama's mouth when I saw him during his Berlin speech at the 'Siegessäule' in Berlin. The enthusiasm did not even diminish when Obama indirectly demanded a stronger German commitment for Afghanistan, a mission hugely unpopular in Germany. Obama is a realist politician whose biggest advantage and worst problem is that people have chosen him as a projection screen for their idealism and hopes. The reactions to him being awarded the Nobel Peace Price show, how strong this discrepancy has become.

So, with Obama out, the person of the year lists get at least a bit more interesting and 'competitive'.  While TIME magazine, for example, opted for United States Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Shalom Bernanke, for his role in keeping the financial crisis in check, the French newspaper le Monde named Bazil's President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. Apart from the fact that rankings of persons are a deeply subjective undertaking and that one can well doubt if there is any real sense in composing them, le Monde's result is interesting. A European newspaper voting Lula as man of the year 2009 is a signal for Brazil (and with it Latin America) being recognized as a global player in Europe.

One of the reasons of Lula being chosen as the man of the year 2009 by le Monde is surely his huge popularity in Brazil, where he still enjoys a 70% popularity near the end of his second presidency. This popularity has slowly carried over first to Latin America and then beyond. Like the biographies of Barack Obama and Bolivia's Evo Morales, Lula's humble beginnings as a steel-worker inspire people. The extreme divisions between poor and rich in Brazil further accentuate the importance of a worker holding the office of the President. But if le Monde had chosen Lula for popularity alone we could as well forget the list and switch to talking about the movie or the book of the year.

But Lula's top position in le Monde's list reflects a very important development in 2009. Brazil has established itself as a regional power in Latin America in the last few years. Its style of influencing intraregional relations in Latin America focuses on the forging of consensus and on the furthering of integration. And it was an integral part of Lula's Presidency to try to use Brazil's regional importance in Latin America as a stepping stone for its ascension to more influence on the global level. In 2009 this policy bared fruits when the G20, in which Brazil plays an important role, was upgraded in it's importance in the wake of the global financial crisis. Additionally Brazil has been able to position itself as a spokesperson of developing countries and was the only rising power and newly industrializing country that played a constructive role in Copenhagen. Brazil is well on it's way to becoming a respected global power.

Last but not least, Lula sets an example by bucking the trend of Latin American Presidents like Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Alvaro Uribe, Daniel Ortega and Manuel Zelaya who aim (or aimed) at a second or third term of presidency despite constitutional barriers. It seems like he did not let his huge popularity go to his head, even though he is trying to use it in order to mobilize the electorate in favor of his designated successor Dilma Rousseff.

Lula has definitely helped to put Brazil, and Latin America as a whole, on the map in Europe.