Now that the contest is over and the winner has been declared, David has asked me to post the following two messages on his behalf. The first is dated 31st January, the day the contest ended:
"Hi Everyone,
First of all, thank you all so much for your enthusiasm, and for your votes and/or comments. All of that is a far better prize in my opinion, and I feel pretty humble that so many people around the world were willing to get behind this over the last 3-4 weeks in particular.
I am especially grateful to my friends Shane Hunter from ARK in Australia, Mark and Wolfgang in the UK, Al Coritz and Chris Harper in the USA, and Wulf Schlep from Europe, who promoted this contest fiercely, spending many long hours at the keyboard or on the phone to mates stirring up interest. There are also a whole raft of other people who I have never met in places like South Africa, the USA and Europe who did the same on websites and forums.
As to the contest itself...
Shane, Mark, Wolfgang and my own boss in Melbourne, Ken Winkel all have a copy of a letter that I sent to the Holiday Inn yesterday morning while the contest was still in progress. In that letter I have informed the promoters that I had become aware that a large block of votes had come my way that I felt might not have been legitimate. I have asked them to audit the final vote counts, and if this was the case I would respect their right to disqualify me and to award the contest to someone else. That issue is now in the hands of the Holiday Inn, who will announce a decision on the 14th February.
If my action means that I am disqualified, then I know a lot of people will be disappointed, including myself and my family. At the same time however I was just not prepared to accept a prize that I might not really have been entitled to.
Regardless of the outcome, I do feel like a winner today. I've won valuable exposure of my project in PNG among both herpers and non-herpers all around the world, and I've received the sort of morale building support from thousands of people that will encourage me to keep fighting for the cause of snake bite patients in Papua New Guinea, because I no longer feel that it's an issue in which I am a lone voice.
Thank you all for that.
Kind regards
David"
The second is from today:
"Hi Everyone,
The promoters of the Holiday Inn contest have accepted the request I made on 31 January to be disqualified, having confirmed that a person or persons unknown had tampered with my vote tally, inflating it by more than 4000 votes.
At the same time they have also audited the votes accumulated by the entrant from Pakistan, and have disqualified his entry as a result of evidence that large numbers of votes were made from the same small number of computers in Pakistan.
I am happy that they have made Singaporean motivational speaker, Mr Lu Keehong the winner of the competition, and am satisfied that the promoters have determined the competition fairly.
I want to thank everyone again for their help and support with this contest, I know a lot of people will be disappointed with the outcome, but after having become aware that my votes were being inflated, I had no option other than to ask to be disqualified.
Cheers
David"
An unfortunate ending due to certain people being utter idiots and thinking that artificially inflating someone's votes is a good idea. At the same time, I salute David's honesty and integrity for asking to be disqualified in the event of irregularities being perpetrated
Cheers,
WW
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