Cambodia's Angkor beaten by Seven Wonders voting system: official

Chan Sophal, deputy provincial governor of Siem Reap, where the 12th century temple is located, called Angkor Wat being overlooked as a modern wonder "regretable" but said the voting system had always made it virtually impossible for a Cambodian monument to win.

The New Seven Wonders Foundation announced the list of the new seven wonders in Lisbon last Saturday after around 100 million votes were registered by internet or telephone. The new list was chosen from a short list of 21 sites selected from an original list of 77.

 "The competition just wasn't suitable for a country in Cambodia's situation," Sophal said by telephone. "It is a country with a very small population, most of whom know nothing about information technology or computers so they could not vote or contribute." 

Cambodia is recovering from almost three decades of civil war, including the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 Democratic Kampuchea regime which wiped out the country's infrastructure, including schools and communications and under which most of the educated population such as teachers and doctors were killed.

 Sophal said technology such as telephones, let alone computers for online voting, were almost non-existent in rural areas. Siem Reap in the country's north is one of Cambodia's poorest provinces and the country remains one of the poorest in the region.

The United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has already blasted the competition as irrelevant. UNESCO designated Angkor Wat a World Heritage site in 1992.

The New Seven Wonders winners were: the Great Wall of China, the ruins of Petra in Jordan, Rio de Janeiro's famous statue of Christ, the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu, the Mayan city of Chichen Itza in Mexico, Rome's Coliseum and the Taj Mahal.

The current population of Cambodia is estimated at around 14 million people. // Deutsche Presse- Agentur