The search for Gabrielle Wal­cott's suc­ces­sor to rep­re­sent T&T at the Miss World pageant in South Africa in De­cem­ber has start­ed. The new fran­chise hold­er of the com­pe­ti­tion is Michael Raghu­nanan, own­er of Michael's Vogue De­signs, who took over from fash­ion de­sign­er and for­mer fran­chise hold­er of both Miss Uni­verse and Miss World, Pe­ter Elias.

Raghu­nanan said he planned to stage a lo­cal con­test to se­lect Miss World T&T on Sep­tem­ber 26. With Miss Uni­verse sched­uled to take place in The Ba­hamas on Au­gust 23, a search of the Web site, www.mis­suni­verse.com con­firms that T&T would not be rep­re­sent­ed this year. Raghu­nanan said he was up to the chal­lenge. He has al­ready start­ed work, putting to­geth­er a com­mit­tee to over­see the se­lec­tion process and has sent let­ters re­quest­ing spon­sor­ship from sev­er­al cor­po­rate com­pa­nies and state bod­ies such as the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, the Min­istry of Cul­ture and the Min­istry of Tourism. Raghu­nanan said Elias, the for­mer na­tion­al di­rec­tor of the com­pe­ti­tion, called him and of­fered con­grat­u­la­tions and words of ad­vice and en­cour­age­ment.

"I felt hum­bled that this great man, who has worked so tire­less­ly to pro­mote the beau­ty of our is­lands to the rest of the world, could take the time to of­fer his kind words and sen­ti­ments," Raghu­nanan said. He said, too, he was moved to ac­cept the chal­lenge af­ter hear­ing Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs, Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald's ad­dress in Par­lia­ment that her min­istry would of­fer 80 per cent of the cost of send­ing a del­e­gate to Miss Uni­verse and Miss World. Raghu­nanan said, "I sense that the min­is­ter is a woman of in­tegri­ty and ho­n­our so I am ex­pect­ing her full sup­port." Raghu­nanan echoed Mc­Don­ald's chal­lenge and hoped that sup­port from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty would be forth­com­ing.

He said, "If I have to beg or bor­row and write let­ters to hun­dreds of com­pa­nies, I am pre­pared to do just that. This is an in­vest­ment in na­tion-build­ing and in the fu­ture of our youth." He added, "It is al­so an un­prece­dent­ed op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­mote the growth of the tourism sec­tor in T&T, es­pe­cial­ly fol­low­ing the vi­cious at­tack on two va­ca­tion­ing na­tion­als from the UK, in To­ba­go over the week­end."

Elias re­sponds

Elias said yes­ter­day he wished Raghu­nanan well.

He said, "I re­al­ly wish him the best. I know that he will give his best. Peo­ple over­look that they are peo­ple's daugh­ters that we work with and as a re­sult this is a pre­cious com­mod­i­ty. I have com­plete faith that Michael will be re­spon­si­ble. I on­ly hope he is able to get the re­quired sup­port to do an ef­fec­tive job

Po­ten­tial del­e­gates

In­ter­est­ed con­tes­tants for Miss World T&T:

�2 Must be 17 on or be­fore Jan­u­ary 1, 2009 and must not have at­tained the age of 24 on or be­fore Jan­u­ary 31, 2009.

�2 Should be height and weight pro­por­tion­ate.

�2 Should be sin­gle and must not have had any chil­dren or have been preg­nant pri­or to en­ter­ing the com­pe­ti­tion and should not be­come preg­nant dur­ing the term of her reign (if se­lect­ed).

�2 Must have a valid T&T pass­port which must not ex­pire be­fore De­cem­ber 2010.

�2 Must be a cit­i­zen ei­ther by birth or through nat­u­ral­i­sa­tion.

�2 Must be a nat­ur­al fe­male. By nat­ur­al it is un­der­stood that on­ly per­sons who were born fe­male are el­i­gi­ble to en­ter.

�2 Must be phys­i­cal­ly fit and ath­let­ic.

n Should pos­sess a tal­ent–singing, danc­ing or play­ing an in­stru­ment.

�2 Must speak Eng­lish as a first lan­guage (al­though bilin­gual per­sons are en­cour­aged to com­pete).

�2 Should be able to trav­el to South Africa if se­lect­ed as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for T&T.

Screen­ing takes place at the end of Au­gust and the win­ner would be se­lect­ed at the lo­cal con­test on Sep­tem­ber 26.

Any­one meet­ing the cri­te­ria who might be in­ter­est­ed, can con­tact fran­chise hold­er Michael Raghu­nanan via tele­phone at 683-6207 or 645-4187.