RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

For­mer cul­ture min­is­ter and cur­rent chair­man of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion, Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters, is de­mand­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ter­ven­tion af­ter a Venezue­lan na­tion­al was crowned and is sched­uled to rep­re­sent this coun­try at an in­ter­na­tion­al pageant.

Pe­ters called for Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne or even Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to get in­volved.

“This can­not hap­pen,” said Pe­ters, who de­scribed him­self as “emo­tion­al­ly dis­turbed”.

Last Sun­day, Milei­dy Mat­er­a­no was crowned Miss Grand T&T and will now head to Viet­nam for the Miss Grand In­ter­na­tion­al pageant.

While there has been staunch crit­i­cism of a non-na­tion­al rep­re­sent­ing this coun­try, fran­chise-hold­er Stolen Pro­duc­tions Lim­it­ed de­fend­ed Mat­er­a­no, say­ing she was a “shin­ing ex­am­ple of what it means to be Tri­ni”.

But Pe­ters yes­ter­day said he will be try­ing to get on to Browne and the Prime Min­is­ter to take ac­tion.

“I would have done it to­day (Thurs­day) but be­cause the Prime Min­is­ter had Cab­i­net and then post-Cab­i­net, I didn’t do any­thing but I will be call­ing them,” he said.

How­ev­er, when asked about the is­sue dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said he would keep his thoughts to him­self.

Pe­ters said while he had no prob­lem with any­one stag­ing a pageant, those which re­quired a del­e­gate to rep­re­sent the coun­try must be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly.

“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,” he ex­plained.

Pe­ters re­called his own ex­pe­ri­ence of hav­ing dual cit­i­zen­ship and hav­ing to re­lin­quish his US ties to be­come a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment.

“I can­not sanc­tion and I don’t think that the Gov­ern­ment of T&T would ever sanc­tion a for­eign­er rep­re­sent­ing T&T where our Na­tion­al An­them will have to be played, where our flags and em­blems would have to be dis­played in terms of mak­ing sure that the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a coun­try is com­plete,” Pe­ters said.

He urged the Gov­ern­ment to ex­am­ine the mat­ter.

“The Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs is the min­istry most re­spon­si­ble for what is go­ing on here. You know if that woman goes out there and some­thing goes wrong, it is T&T name that is go­ing there you know,” he said.

“This is not a triv­ial thing, you know, some lit­tle com­pe­ti­tion that they have in Port-of-Spain where Mis­ter John Doe gives some, this is some­thing that is go­ing out of this coun­try and tak­ing my coun­try’s name with them ... that can­not hap­pen,” he added.

Pe­ters vowed to not let up on the mat­ter.

Ef­forts yes­ter­day to get a re­sponse from Min­is­ter Browne were un­suc­cess­ful.