Sto­ries by RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Venezue­lan-born Milei­dy Mat­er­a­no, who was con­tro­ver­sial­ly crowned Miss Grand In­ter­na­tion­al T&T a few weeks ago and was sched­uled to rep­re­sent the coun­try in Viet­nam next month, has stepped down.

How­ev­er, her de­ci­sion was not sparked by the furore which erupt­ed over the pageant or­gan­is­ers’ de­ci­sion to name her, as a non-na­tion­al, to rep­re­sent T&T.

Rather, she said it was be­cause of new de­vel­op­ments over the last 72 hours, where she was told she would have to pro­cure her own spon­sor­ship to at­tend the pageant.

The an­nounce­ment was made yes­ter­day at a me­dia con­fer­ence by at­tor­neys Lemuel Mur­phy, Tama­ra Gre­go­rio and Wayne Sturge, who are rep­re­sent­ing Mat­er­a­no, at Sturge’s Regius Cham­bers in Port-of-Spain.

“Milei­dy Mat­er­a­no has cho­sen to step down and to re­lin­quish her ti­tle as Miss Grand T&T due to de­vel­op­ments which arose in the last 72 hours,” Sturge said.

Sturge said dur­ing the 72-hour pe­ri­od, Mat­er­a­no’s man­ag­er, Charisse Par­sons, was in­formed by the pageant com­pa­ny, Stolen Pro­duc­tions Lim­it­ed, via a What­sApp mes­sage on her cell­phone, “that for Milei­dy’s reign to con­tin­ue, she had to fund on her own the trip to Viet­nam pageant, as well as oth­er in­ci­den­tals and fail­ure to do so would re­sult in her reign be­ing ter­mi­nat­ed and her crown be­ing passed to the first run­ner-up.”

“In the cir­cum­stances, Milei­dy has de­cid­ed that she will for­mal­ly step down. She wish­es to as­sure that her de­ci­sion was in no way in­flu­enced by any oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions,” Sturge said.

“Milei­dy wish­es to in­di­cate that had it not been for this lat­est de­vel­op­ment, she stood ready to con­tin­ue her reign. Milei­dy wish­es the pub­lic and well-wish­ers to un­der­stand that her de­ci­sion was made with a very heavy heart. She wish­es to add that had she been ad­vised of this in ad­vance, she would not have tak­en part in the lo­cal pageant.”

Asked if the is­sue of spon­sor­ship was not made clear be­fore to Mat­er­a­no when she first en­tered the com­pe­ti­tion, Sturge said: “In essence, what was com­mu­ni­cat­ed to her man­age­ment be­fore, as we are in­struct­ed, was that the promised spon­sor­ship, and I don’t want to say off the ta­ble, but it wasn’t made in very clear terms that she, Miss Mat­er­a­no, was re­spon­si­ble for her own spon­sor­ship.”

Asked how much mon­ey it would have cost Mat­er­a­no to go to Viet­nam, Guardian Me­dia was told ap­prox­i­mate­ly $60,000.

The out-of-pock­et mon­ey ex­pens­es from since she en­tered the com­pe­ti­tion to the time she stepped down is al­so yet to be cal­cu­lat­ed, but will be dis­closed to the pub­lic, her at­tor­neys said.

Mat­er­a­no has been in the coun­try for the past sev­en years and has ap­plied for cit­i­zen­ship and a work per­mit.

While she was at the me­dia con­fer­ence, Mat­er­a­no nei­ther ad­dressed the me­dia nor took any ques­tions. How­ev­er, her lawyers said they ad­vised her not to speak as the mat­ter may go to court.

With Mat­er­a­no’s an­nounce­ment, it is ex­pect­ed that the crown will be passed on to the com­pe­ti­tion’s first run­ner-up Re­bekah His­lop.

How­ev­er, of­fi­cial word is yet to be made by the pageant’s or­gan­is­ers, Stolen Pro­duc­tions Lim­it­ed.

Ques­tions sent to SPL’s head of mar­ket­ing and pub­lic re­la­tions, Ker­ry Gob­erd­han, went unan­swered up to press time last evening.

When word of Mat­er­a­no’s se­lec­tion broke ear­li­er this month, there was a pub­lic firestorm over the de­ci­sion, with many ex­press­ing the view that a non-na­tion­al should not rep­re­sent the coun­try and was al­so un­suit­able to do so. How­ev­er, the pageant or­gan­is­ers stuck by the de­ci­sion, say­ing she had not fit the cri­te­ria for en­ter­ing the pageant.

For­mer Cul­ture Min­is­ter and cur­rent Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters was par­tic­u­lar­ly vo­cal on the mat­ter.

He called on Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne and even Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to in­ter­vene in the is­sue, not­ing it was wrong for a non-na­tion­al to rep­re­sent T&T on an in­ter­na­tion­al stage. Pe­ters said it shouldn’t hap­pen and de­scribed him­self as “emo­tion­al­ly dis­turbed” by the is­sue.

Pe­ters said then that whilst it is okay for any­one to hold a pageant and it open to any­body, when it came to a pageant where there would be in­ter­na­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, that was a dif­fer­ent sce­nario al­to­geth­er.

“In or­der to rep­re­sent a coun­try, it has to be sanc­tioned first of all by the coun­try and it has to be that the per­son rep­re­sent­ing your coun­try has to have some lo­cal, some le­gal stand­ing, not re­al­ly a res­i­dent, but you could be a for­eign­er but you must be a cit­i­zen of the coun­try be­cause once you be­come a cit­i­zen of a coun­try, you be­come part of that coun­try,” Pe­ters said.

Ef­forts to con­tact Pe­ters last evening were un­suc­cess­ful as calls to his cell­phone went straight to voice mes­sage and he did not re­turn calls.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley was al­so asked to ad­dress the is­sue dur­ing a re­cent post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, but in­stead said he would keep his thoughts on it to him­self.