Malala Yousafzai at a hospital in Birmingham, UK. – File photo by Reuters
Malala Yousufzai at a hospital in Birmingham, UK. — File photo by Reuters

KARACHI, Jan 3: Malala Yousufzai, a 15-year-old schoolgirl from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has been chosen as the Herald’s Person of the Year for 2012 for “championing the cause of girls’ education which brought her under direct fire from the Taliban”.

The Person of the Year project, part of the Herald’s special annual issue which hits the newsstands across Pakistan on Friday, set out to recognise those individuals in Pakistan who had a profound influence on the news and who had embodied, for good or ill, what was important about the previous year.

Yousufzai — who is currently recovering in a hospital in the United Kingdom after having been attacked by gunmen in her hometown Swat last year — emerged as the victor in a three-way voting process which included online voting, postal ballots and votes from a panel of 10 eminent Pakistanis.

A 33.3 per cent weightage was assigned to each of the three constituent parts of the voting process.

In the final, cumulative result, Yousufzai received 30.4pc of the votes, followed by the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who received 24.1pc. He was included in the list of 10 nominees for Herald’s Person of the Year for “pursuing a campaign of unprecedented judicial activism”.

Other candidates in the running were Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour; Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani; real estate tycoon Malik Riaz; film-maker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy; Interior Minister Rehman Malik; Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar; Chief Election Commissioner Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim; and former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

Opinion

Editorial

A positive note
Updated 10 Feb, 2025

A positive note

With govt unable to press growth accelerator without upending fragile recovery, sufferings of low-middle-income households are unlikely to disappear soon.
Justice for all
10 Feb, 2025

Justice for all

ALONG with his domestic agenda, Donald Trump is busy ripping to shreds the post-World War II ‘rules-based...
Held back
10 Feb, 2025

Held back

IT is a crying shame how women are conspicuously absent from Pakistan’s civil services. Despite comprising half ...
Race against time
Updated 09 Feb, 2025

Race against time

While some bright spots emerged at Breathe Pakistan moot, we must streamline our climate governance.
Open door
09 Feb, 2025

Open door

THE door is still open for talks, National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq has reminded the PTI. What matters, however,...
Football suspension
09 Feb, 2025

Football suspension

ONCE again, Pakistan has been ousted from the global football family. FIFA recently suspended the Pakistan Football...