A popular Caribbean magazine has named Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley as its “Person of the Year.”
The Brooklyn-based Everybody’s magazine that is published and owned by Grenadian-born Herman Hall, said Rowley, who led the People’s National Movement (PNM) to victory, on September 7, by winning 23 of 41 parliamentary seats, “was the year’s most influential news maker in the Caribbean.
“All eyes were on him and the Trinidad and Tobago electorate,” the people of Trinidad and Tobago, regardless of political affiliation, deserve high praise for dignifying themselves in the keenly-contested election,” the article said.
“We, Americans, as we prepare for the 2016 presidential primaries and national election need to copy a page from Trinbagonians,” it added. “We thank our readers and social media friends for helping us to declare Prime Minister Rowley as Everybody’s Person of the Year.”
The magazine also acknowledged Grenadian Lewis Hamilton, the 2008, 2014 and 2015 Formula One World Champion; Jamaican Olympians Usain Bolt and Shelly Ann Fraser-Pryce; Grenadian Olympian Kiraini James; and Dominican-born Baroness Patricia Scotland, Commonwealth Secretary General,
“They were the choice of many readers,” it said, adding that the 2015 “Person of the Year” citation will be presented to Rowley in 2016 “either in Trinidad and Tobago or [in] New York.”
Since 1978, the second year of Everybody’s publication, it has been naming an individual of Caribbean heritage as its “Person of the Year.”
During its early years, the magazine held a gala dinner in New York to honor that person.
Recipients who attended the dinner included St. Lucian Nobel Laureate Sir Arthur Lewis; the late Caribbean American Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, of Barbadian and Guyanese roots; and the late Prime Ministers of Barbados and Dominica, Tom Adams and Mary Eugenia Charles.
