Bandwagon dragons: People cast their votes online for the Komodo National Park during a campaign in Denpasar, Bali, on Tuesday. The Culture and Tourism Ministry organized the campaign for the park to become one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature. JP/I Wayan Juniartha
The Culture and Tourism Ministry launched its Komodo Mobilvote campaign in Bali to invite people to vote for the Komodo National Park in Komodo Island in the New7Wonders of Nature popularity contest.
Promotional activities were held on Kuta beach, in downtown Denpasar and in several other busy locations in Jimbaran and Nusa Dua.
The campaign team built a booth to lure visitors to vote for Komodo National Park, one of the 28 finalists. The other finalists in the contest include Venezuela’s Angel Falls, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the Maldives and South Korea’s Jeju Island.
The contest is organized by the Swiss-based New7Wonders Foundation and is purely a popularity poll, where multiple votes are not prevented.
During the first stage in the nomination process in early 2008, activists from Indonesia proposed Lake Toba in North Sumatra, Krakatau in West Java, Lake Sentani in Papua, Mt. Bromo in East Java and Komodo National Park. There were 440 international nominations.
From Indonesia, only Komodo National Park won enough votes to get to this current stage.
Nobel Pardamean, the ministry’s electronic media division head, said they provided facilities to enable people to vote.
On the same day the campaign began, hundreds of people cast their votes. “We face tough competition at this stage. Many of the finalist countries have implemented intensive promotional activities,” he said.
Additionally, they have easy and quick access to information technology, he said, clearly ignoring poorer countries with finalists such as Tanzania, Azerbaijan and Bangladesh.
“In Indonesia, access to the Internet is still limited. Not many people are familiar with this hi-tech gadget,” he added. The Internet is not actually a gadget, but a network.
The campaign to promote Komodo National Park was previously held in Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Bandung, West Java. “We got 5,000 additional votes in Yogyakarta. We hope to attract at least 1,000 more in Bali,” he explained.
Dutch tourist Danny participated in the vote saying.” I just want to choose this amazing place. I have never been there but hope to go there someday.”
The campaign will continue promoting Komodo National Park in other cities across Indonesia.
