Aliqtisadi Magazine announces its Person of the Year 2011: The Syrian Citizen

Mon, 2012-01-23 08:29 - By

Announcement, Publishing News, Media, Aliqtisadi Magazine, Ammar Haykal, Hamoud Almahmoud, Haykal Media, Person of the Year 2011

Aliqtisadi, Syria’s premier business biweekly, announced the title “Person of the Year” goes to the Syrian Citizen, whose hard work, commitment, and perseverance kept the country alive through what’s thought to be the most difficult year in the history of modern Syria. “Coping with the economic crisis was thought to be close to mission impossible with material shortages, currency fluctuations, lay offs, and many times the absence of the family’s breadwinner. But the Syrian citizen managed to pull through the hard days despite a reluctant economic team in the government.”

Causing a wide-scale engagement in social media networks, Aliqtisadi’s cover featured a mirror that reflects the image of the reader as they held the magazine and looked at it. Under the mirror it read, “You are our Person of the Year 2011… and every Syrian Citizen.” Many Syrians from different professional backgrounds took photos of the cover while they were looking into the mirror, and posted the photo on social networks. “We expected the participation of many of our readers, but the level of interest was astonishing,” said Ammar Haykal, managing director of Haykal Media, the group that publishes Aliqtisadi since 2004. “Our editors and associates were showered with requests from readers to have their photo taken, so that they could post it online.”

Aliqtisadi’s Editor-in-Chief Hamoud Almahmoud introduced the Person of the Year, saying that the magazine wanted to honor every Syrian citizen regardless of their political orientation. “Regardless of political difference, the economic crisis united all Syrians, in pain and in their attempt to stand up to the plate.” Almahmoud went on in his introduction to praise the high morale of the Syrian citizen, who in spite of the suffering induced by the crisis, kept their value system and moral principles intact. “You, the Syrian Citizen, employed or unemployed, you are the Business Person of the Year, and not any government official. You are the one who endured, and helped the country endure.”, said Almahmoud.

The frame of the mirror on the cover carried ornamented names of Syrian governorates and the shortages that Syria faced in 2011, in addition to the names of most professions and businesses practiced by the Syrian citizen, and including the unemployed, students, and housewives. “You the family breadwinner, whether you are working, retired or an unemployed young man, you had lived through a harsh year having to take responsibility for your family or parents. You were smiling before them, but you spent days and nights trying hard to make a living in the honest ways available to you, without trying to find justifications to quit the principles that you had been brought up to believe in. Evil exists, but you were the majority.”