Burundi netizens hailed, slammed the Miss Burundi beauty pageant after the grande finale revealed Ngaruko Kelly Michelle as the winner of the 2022 beauty pageant.
The netizens organized a twitter space to debate on the organization and the criteria in place for the incumbent Burundi beauty pageant.
“We are gathered here to talk about how the organization was, how things were, challenges encountered here and there. Would there be any suggestions so as to successfully carry out the next edition of Miss Burundi event?” said Patrick Ngendakumana who was hosting the twitter space.
More than two thousand twitter users joined the space to debate the much contested selection of this year’s Miss Burundi that took place last Friday in Kigobe, Bujumbura.
“We appreciated how the first edition (since Miss Burundi was in the hands of SSE) was organized, things were beautiful, but it was deceiving to see no change last time, it was almost the same. Unfortunately there is a newspaper which put on the same photo, the image of both editions,” said Elsie Gretta, one of the netizens.
However, Listeners and speakers on the twitter space that was organized to debate on the beauty pageant hailed the initiative taken by the organizer Sultan Suleiman Enterprise.
Daly Ngarambe, a member of the 2021 Miss Burundi edition jury condemned the attitude of some netizens who were furious about the selections claiming that Miss Burundi 2022 didn’t meet the standards.
“Every argument given is baseless. No one will approach you and try to convince you with what they have identified as a problem to try to give a solution or to provide any suggestion. You will not find any concrete thing in what they say,” he lamented.
“The Miss Burundi of 2021 didn’t do anything that we will remember after her tenure because her projects were not implemented we don’t even know what failed or to what extent she implemented some projects,” said one of the netizens called Intore Segihembe.
“We organize this beauty pageant so as to vote for a Burundian girl who is beautiful, talented, intelligent, who has character but her project must be the best of all. Because that project will allow the sustained development of the country so this contest has nothing to do with ethnicity,” said Suleyman Sultan the organizer of Miss Burundi.
“People knew that the jury had the final word. They had to accept the jury members’ decision and unfortunately they started insulting the crowned contestant around the issue of colorism, that thing really hurt us,” deplored the organizer.
“People who complained about the communication were not wrong at all. They were very right. Miss Burundi encountered a communication problem. But it is not that big that we cannot find a solution to it. I wanted to promise you that we are going to work on that issue. It will never happen again,” said beauty pageant organizers.