Stolen Pro­duc­tions Lim­it­ed (SPL) Pageants are stand­ing by the win­ner of the Miss Grand T&T 2023, Venezue­lan Milei­dy Mat­er­a­no.

In fact, the com­pa­ny said the Venezue­lan, who has been liv­ing and work­ing in this coun­try for years, is a “shin­ing ex­am­ple of what it means to be ‘Tri­ni’”.

The com­pa­ny said Mat­er­a­no met the cri­te­ria for el­i­gi­bil­i­ty with the Miss Grand In­ter­na­tion­al fran­chise and will go on to rep­re­sent Trinidad and To­ba­go in Viet­nam on Oc­to­ber 25.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, SPL’s head of mar­ket­ing and pub­lic re­la­tions, Ker­ry Gob­erd­han, said Mat­er­a­no will now go through prepa­ra­tions for the in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion next month.

The fran­chise hold­er of the Miss Grand T&T Pageant is­sued a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing sur­prise and crit­i­cism on so­cial me­dia and ra­dio talk show pro­grammes that a Venezue­lan was crowned the win­ner and will be rep­re­sent­ing T&T.

How­ev­er, SPL Pageants said it stands be­hind the fair­ness of the judg­ing process and the re­sults. It added that its cor­po­rate spon­sors, judges and pageant ex­perts came to­geth­er to or­ches­trate a show that SPL Pageants was proud to have put for­ward.

In ad­dress­ing the pub­lic out­rage, SPL Pageants said, “As is ex­pect­ed in any pageant, there will al­ways be voic­es of dis­sent with the fi­nal de­ci­sion.

“While all of our con­tes­tants are crown wor­thy, on the night of the fi­nals, our es­teemed judges and au­di­ence chose Ms Milei­dy Mat­er­a­no as our Miss Grand Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

It said it took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that Mat­er­a­no was not born in T&T.

“Sub­se­quent to be­ing crowned, we are aware of the con­cerns of hav­ing a Venezue­lan-born rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Trinidad and To­ba­go. This was a ques­tion posed to SPL Pageants at the time of cast­ing of Ms Mat­er­a­no as a con­tes­tant,” it said.

“We will like to make it clear that the cri­te­ria for el­i­gi­bil­i­ty with the Miss Grand In­ter­na­tion­al fran­chise does en­dorse Ms Mat­er­a­no as a non-na­tive, liv­ing and work­ing with­in the so­ci­ety of the coun­try and as an in­trin­sic rep­re­sen­ta­tive of our cul­ture.”

SPL Pageants said it was proud to have Mat­er­a­no as a con­tes­tant and now a del­e­gate, “be­cause of what she stands for and rep­re­sents.”

“Trinidad is her home! Our coun­try has opened our arms to our Venezue­lan neigh­bours in their time of need and we at SPL Pageants are im­mense­ly proud that we, the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, have cho­sen love and com­pas­sion above all,” SPL Pageants said.

“We have al­ways been a melt­ing pot of peo­ples and cul­tures, with sig­nif­i­cant in­flu­ence from our South Amer­i­can fam­i­ly. Mat­er­a­no, as the ti­tle hold­er, rep­re­sents that our beau­ti­ful di­as­po­ra can­not be de­fined by any one eth­nic­i­ty, cul­ture, mind­set and colour,” it added.

It stressed that while there were “voic­es of neg­a­tiv­i­ty and an­i­mos­i­ty”, it was over­whelmed by the ma­jor­i­ty who have been sup­port­ive of Mat­er­a­no and SPL.

“Our win­ner is a shin­ing ex­am­ple of what it means to be ‘Tri­ni’,” SPL Pageants said.

Mean­while, Miss World Trinidad and To­ba­go has dis­tanced it­self from a post on so­cial me­dia which called on the Miss Grand In­ter­na­tion­al T&T fran­chise hold­ers to step down and be in­ves­ti­gat­ed. The post al­so called the crown­ing of a non-na­tion­al as “an em­bar­rass­ment to our pageant in­dus­try and our na­tion.”

How­ev­er, fran­chise di­rec­tor of Miss World T&T, Charu Lochan Dass, said yes­ter­day that the page “Miss Trinidad and To­ba­go” is not in any way af­fil­i­at­ed with her fran­chise, adding she be­lieves that it is a fan page that high­lights pageantry news.

“We un­der­stand that some posts/state­ments are be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed by the @mis­strinidadand­to­ba­go page but we are in no way af­fil­i­at­ed with that page. In fact we are to date un­aware of who runs those so­cial me­dia plat­forms,” Lochan Dass said in a state­ment.