The last time that the Queen of the Bay pageant made evening news was during last year's September Celebrations when it turned into a public fiasco.
The decade's old pageant has a long history of prestige, and it even has a special place in the September Celebrations schedule. But, all that was disregarded when the past Chair of Queen of the Bay Committee got into a public dispute over the with the judges over who should have won. That turned an exercise in patriotism into a soap opera on a public stage.
So, this year, the Government wants to make sure that there is not going to be a repeat of that embarrassment. So, they've decided to turn over leadership of the pageant to a committee made up of past queens who have intimate knowledge about how coordinator Emma Boiton ran it before her she had to step down for health reasons.
These past queens are going to act as Trustees of the Queen of the Bay Pageant, and today, they were introduced in a press conference hosted by Deputy Prime Minister Patrick Faber, the Co-Chair of the National Celebrations Commission.
Here's what the DPM - who co-chairs the September Celebrations Committee had to say about the way the pageant will be managed this time around:
Hon. Patrick Faber
"Our intention is to ensure that the pageant is never ever again ran away with. That's really what happened last year. It was an approach made by the former queens for us to say we are very concerned about what has happened. Of course the prestige of the pageant is something that they treasure and they value. This is something that they have been a part of for many years and so they approached us to say 'please entrust us to do this, there's nobody more fitting to do this work', and so we accepted that to be the case and while we insist that it be a pageant because of its patriotic and civic value to us that it belongs to the government and people of Belize, that there's no other entity more fitting to manage it than the association of former queens."
As you heard, Shari Williams will act as the Co-coordinator of the Pageant, along with Emma Boiton, who was play more of an advisory role. The Association of Past Queens will assist them in running it.
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