Time ditches Sisi as person of the year

Armed Forces chief Colonel General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is no longer in the running for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, despite winning the reader’s poll last Wednesday.

The magazine’s editors will reveal their selection on Wednesday December 11. They said on Monday they had whittled the finalists down to eight, excluding both Sisi and the reader’s vote runner-up, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Sisi won almost 600,000 votes in the reader’s poll, or 26.6 percent of the total, ahead of Erdogan and American singer-actress Miley Cyrus.

Time described Sisi as “the Egyptian defense minister (and top army general) [who] spearheaded the controversial removal of democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsi in July this year.”

Erdogan came second with 20.6 percent of the vote, while Cyrus came third with 16.3 percent of the vote.

The Time's Person of the Year is a poll that profiles the person that "most influenced the news this year for better or worse.”

The finalists selected by the editors include Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Miley Cyrus, Pope Francis, US President Barack Obama, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, notorious whistle-blower Edward Snowden and gay rights activist Edith Windsor.

Ironically, ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi was a runner-up in last year's poll. The editors wrote that "Egypt’s new president won kudos abroad and curses at home. What he does next could determine the shape of the Middle East."