Controversial pageant has outraged past queen

It’s a story that has stirred the spirit of nationalism following its broadcast last night and tonight we bring you portions of yesterday’s interview with Margaret Johnson and her attempts to explain why this year’s Miss Belize pageant was a private affair attended only by a handful of family members and officials. And we spoke to Miss Belize 2006 – 2007, Maria Jeffery about the controversy of Saturday’s living room contest, she had more than just an opinion on the so called pageant and told us that past winners of pageants hosted by Pageants Belize still haven’t received their prizes.

Maria Jeffery, Miss Belize 2006-2007
“Well it was very surprising to me because usually you would probably hear it that it’s coming up, and get ready and you’re invited; the country is invited to see this event. But I had no idea that this was going to happen as for some of the other people that were around me. To hear that it was in a home in the downstairs office, as she puts it, is surprising because usually for a pageant where you would think of as being prestigious, you’d wan to hold it somewhere else that at least the country is invited, a place that a reasonable amount of people would be there to witness it. I don’t think that—I’m, very happy for the girl of course, because I don’t want to discourage anyone from participating in a pageant and representing their country, just that she won’t be able to celebrate it as well as she should you know.”

Margaret Johnson, Pageants Belize
“A lot of resorts responded really well and they are like—one of the packages usually is like five thousand, two hundred to five thousand eight hundred Belize dollars. In the case of the one that we have out in Chetumal, Mexico, that is even more. The details of that, they will have to send to me to know exactly what is in the package. But we try to let them know that it’s Miss Belize and the girls need pampering. But mostly we try to get the resorts here in Belize because we want to make sure that the girl learns more about Belize.”

Maria Jeffery
“Personally, I haven’t received all the prizes that were promised to me. The one that I always focused mainly on was the scholarship because she promised me a scholarship of five thousand dollars from Pageants Belize, which I have not received as yet. I have already attended a semester of school along with some summer classes. I have approached her and tried to contact her may times on it which she practically refused to do anything about it or actually saying that I don’t deserve anything from Pageants Belize because I have breached my contract so many times, which she hasn’t explained to me how as yet. In regards to the other girls, Felicita Arzu, which was the past Miss Belize World, she gave up her crown, her title because she couldn’t deal with Pageants Belize anymore, sadly because she was a very good representative as well. So she just took herself out of that situation, she hasn’t received all of her prizes as yet. Tanisha Vernon, which was the young lady that I crowned; Miss Belize Universe, she was stripped of her title, which is very sad because these girls are the best representatives of our country.”

Margaret Johnson
“Assuming that because a delegate has a sash on, everything she says is true. What happened is that as a result of, I think you might be familiar with some of the things we’ve gone through this year; it was very rough. We’re trying to bring it back and we thought that if we did it. I said to someone just recently, I said do you know anything about the movie Good Will Hunting? You’ve seen it? But do you know what happened to the move Good Will Hunting? Good Will Hunting was a low end production movie which ended up getting number one awards, Grammy, whatever in every single category. So I took this Miss Belize this year as that sort of production.”

“Well we did not advertise the pageant as we normally do. We had it on the website. We had it on the website for about four to six months because the girls had been applying for about four months now. But we didn’t really advertise out there like we normally do because—there are two reasons why we didn’t advertise it. One is because the format that we were doing, we thought that maybe some people in Belize would not understand it and also we wanted to make sure that the people who … I want them to see the product of what happens here and they’re gonna have to trust us that what we did this time is correct. Sometimes you can’t see it until you see what happens to it.”

Maria Jeffery
“I guess only she would understand and only she can explain it to you because I don’t know. I won’t be able to explain that one to you.”

Margaret Johnson
“Belize is not really known for doing pageants internationally, following guidelines the way it should be followed. I am one that tries to stick to it because it matter when we go out there. It’s not about just doing for here.”

Jose Sanchez
“So you’re saying we didn’t hear about the pageant because …”

Margaret Johnson
“I don’t want to rely … my thing for being here is about who wins this pageant this year and what we’re going to do for Belize and how Pageants Belize is going to move forward. That is the main priority of our pageants.”

Maria Jeffery says that Margaret Johnson will be getting an official letter from her very soon.