Twenty-year-old Miss Twenty-year-old Miss Peru was crowned Miss World on Saturday in a southern Chinese resort town, as China looks to become the regular host of the event. This was the second year Miss World was held in Sanya, on the semi-tropical island of Hainan, and organizers have applied to hold the event at the same venue next year, the Xinhua news agency reported. The southern Chinese city has embraced the pageant as a way to boost its tourism potential. Miss China, 20-year-old accountancy student Jin Yang, said it was her dream to win on home soil, but she was eliminated after the final 15.

The World Voting programme allowing fans across the globe to have the total say of the results was a big risk for the Miss World Organization. The voting is not based on plurality but rather a system akin to Electoral College of the United States only that each country gets equal electoral votes and in turn converted into points. For example, if Miss Russia tops the Spanish votes, she gets ten points. The second would get 9 points and so on.

Ah! yes the winner. She may be thankful for adoring fans who voted her but Maria Julia Mantilla of Peru can rightly sit on the throne and wear that azure tiara. While Miss World took the risk of putting everything on the hands of the public, it was all worth it with Peru emerging victorious. She's stunning and she's wonderful. She held a good composure and she delivered her answers well at the brief interview. She's one of the favourites too. With a revolutionary system of picking up the winner and Miss Maria Julia Mantilla as the winner, the conclusion of Miss World 2004 couldn't get any better.

Cecilia Sangeeta Bilung