point and counterpoint

So Puerto Princesa made it after all

Here are the 28 final­ists in the New 7 Won­ders of Nature:

1. Ama­zon
2. Angel Falls
3. Bay of Fundy
4. Black For­est
5. Bu Tinah Shoals
6. Cliffs of Moher
7. Dead Sea
8. El Yunque
9. Gala­pa­gos
10. Grand Canyon
11. Great Bar­rier Reef
12. Halong Bay
13. Iguazu Falls
14. Jeita Grotto
15. Jeju Island
16. Kil­i­man­jaro
17. Komodo
18. Mal­dives
19. Masurian Lake District
20. Matterhorn/Cervino
21. Mil­ford Sound
22. Mud Vol­ca­noes
23. Puerto Princesa Under­ground River
24. Sun­dar­bans
25. Table Moun­tain
26. Uluru
27. Vesu­vius
28. Yushan

As I pre­dicted, at least one very promi­nent nat­ural land­mark made it. In fact, 10 out of 12 in my list did make it; those are the entries high­lighted in blue.

Vot­ing closes in 2011, so there’s more than enough time to cast votes and mobi­lize groups. (And of course, to cre­ate mul­ti­ple accounts for vot­ing )

Now that Puerto Princesa Sub­ter­ranean River National Park is in, does that mean I’ll vote for it? I’m still think­ing about it. You see, as a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple, I never got sold to the idea of vot­ing out of patri­o­tism. Espe­cially in a poll such as this that is very prone to block vot­ing; Indone­sia, Viet­nam, India and the United States are report­edly the biggest vot­ing blocks in this poll, and this alone says some­thing about the poll itself. I’ll leave the mass-voting for Puerto Princesa to the ever active Pinoy online community—I’m sure that groups are already vot­ing in droves as I write this. My incli­na­tion right now is to vote for entries that stand for what is the best not only in Asia but in the whole world as well. (Hav­ing said that, Kil­i­man­jaro is in my list, it’s sim­ply the only one of its kind in Africa.)

Good luck to Puerto Princesa