Words by Gabi Logan
Two Italian candidates—Mario Monti and Mario Draghi—are in the running for Time magazine’s annual person of the year cover feature, which honours the year’s most influential person, group, concept, or thing.
Time held an online poll in early April allowing the public to vote on the candidates for the cover. The top 100 finalists were published on the 18th of April as the “Time 100”, a list of the top 100 most influential people in the world. Another Italian, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne, was one of the original candidates, but he didn’t make the Time 100.
The finalists range from political figures like U.S. President Barack Obama to pop culture icons like singer Lady Gaga. A notorious criminal group, the computer hacker cell Anonymous, was also on the list.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti has already been featured on the cover of Time magazine once this year. Dubbed “the world’s most important ex-economics professor” on the Time 100 list, Monti has come into the spotlight for pulling Italy away from the verge of economic collapse and preserving the unified European economic zone in the process.
Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), has balanced his practical experience as a banker with an academic mind to work towards European price stabilization and rescue of beleaguered European banks and struggling Euro Zone nations during his first year of office.
