To Richard Stengel, Managing Editor, Time Magazine We would like to nominate Tunisian market trader Muhammad Al Bouazizi as your Person of the Year for 2011. Your criteria is 'the person who has done most to influence events of the year'. Just a few months after his selfless act, we have seen protests leading to the collapse of two dictatorships, and popular uprisings across the Middle East as the people demand democracy and influence over their own destiny. It is hard to imagine any individual who could do more in the coming months to change the course of an entire region, if not the global political map itself. It would be all too easy to forget, as events unfold on a daily basis, that all this started thanks to the actions of just one man, selling fruit on a street, in a small provinicial Tunisian town. The 'Time' award is of course not a prize; but it should be a marker for the world to acknowledge the acts of others. And Mr Bouazizi, in a single act, has done more than Presidents, Prime Minsters, Diplomats and opinion leaders have achieved in 30 years in the Middle East. Please, over coming months, don't forget him, and make him your Person of the Year

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