The Philippine Online Chronicles

Local media has been announcing the inclusion of the Puerto Princesa Underground River (PPUR) in the “provisional list” of the New Seven Wonders of Nature but Palace insists that the tally is not yet over and that voters shouldn’t delete their text votes.

According to deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte, they have been receiving a lot of reports of Filipino texters who did not receive confirmation of their votes.

“Keep the text messages. If there is a problem during the validation, those ‘unconfirmed’ votes will be the proof that many people voted for the PPUR," she said in an interview.

Valte said they will talk to the organizers because the influx of text messages during the last hours of the voting period might have caused glitches, resulting the failure of the confirmation of votes.

Provisional list

Filmmaker Bernard Weber, founder and president of the Swiss foundation New7Wonders, said Palawan’s PPUR is now in the “provisional list” based on the first count of votes.

While the final results will be announced in early 2012, the organizers already mentioned PPUR, along with the Amazon rainforest, Vietnam’s Halong Bay, Agentina’s Iguazu Falls, South Korea’s Jeju Island, Indonesia’s Komodo and South Africa’s Table Mountain as among the provisional winners.

Surprisingly, Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro, the Dead Sea and the United States’ Grand Canyon did not make the cut.

From 440 contenders, the list was halved to 220 and the further trimmed to 77 until a panel cut it to 28 for the final voting.

Besides the announcement of the New 7 Wonders of Nature, the foundation is planning to set a new survey on the Top Seven Cities of the World.

Palawan’s win

Ever since the campaign started, the government had been calling for the support of the Filipino community to ensure PPUR’s win.

Department of Interior and Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo said mayors all over the country had been calling on their constituents to vote by text or the Internet in a “last-ditch” effort to further boost the campaign.

Robredo said, “Di dapat tayo makuntento na pumasok lang tayo sa number 7 o sa Magic 7…. dapat maging number one tayo sa pitong mga papasok (new seven wonders of nature) sa contest na ito. (We shouldn’t be content of being included in the Magic 7. We should be number one in this contest.).”

Puerto Princesa Mayor Edward Hagedorn said since PPUR was included in the New7Wonders search domestic flights to the city quadrupled from 3 to 12, giving them an additional P700 million in earnings from tourism.

Hagedorn said they are expecting to earn as much as P2 billion if the underground river is announced as among the final winners.