Hazel ,Hazel ,Hazel !

Last Sunday ,the 23rd November ,2008 ,saw the Malawian representative in the Big Brother Africa III ,Hazel Warren missing the the $100,000 prize by a whisker. A lot of her fans especially here at the home soil were disappointed and including yours trully was equally disappointed at seeing Hazel not making history for Malawi by Winning the Cash. Alot of noise has been made with some accusing the transparentness of the statistical system that the Information Risk Consultants used to determine the winner. Others argue that ,if there was a tie ,the monies could have been split between Ricco and Hazel.
Whether the system that was used by the Risk Management Consultants was or the rules governing the ultimate winner are at fault ,me i see the results as a reflection and the issue of ICT at work. By the time KB announced that there was a tie between Hazel and Ricco with a six votes each and then that the risk management consultants had decided to use percentage votes ,i told my collegues that Hazel is going to loose ,straight away. Why ? If you look at the countries that voted for Hazel including ourselves are the likes of Botswana and Ricco apart from Angola had Nigeria .For Malawi ,we are not all that exposed to ICT and the internet usage is not all that large ,and even the alternative way of voting,the phone -not so many people could afford to lose the $0.40 just for the sake of voting Hazel to win .And most of the other countries that voted for Hazel face similar ICT Challenges . And for a country like Nigeria which voted for Ricco apart from having and advanced ICT infrastructre system has even the largest population in Africa -An advantage to Ricco. And Ricco had an advantage considering that the whole Africa apart from the 12 participating countries voted for him . As such ,i do not see the reason why some people should be mad that Hazel was robbed ,but rather ,the Country Malawi should learn one or two lessons from this ; ICT awareness should be improved and Accessibility -the System is just so expensive(may be the most expensive in the world) if you look at Airtime cost.
BUT all in all , i salute Hazel for being in the final and behaving so nicely ,atleast this time there was no boring kisses like the ones which our BBA 2 representative was giving to the Ugandan Mistress. Lets wait for BBA4 and may be the rules will change when there will be a tie and pray that by then we will be voting by phone for free and then our internet usage will be improved ,remember the Government idea of Rural Connectivity(ICT wise).