Committee recommends cancellation of Miss Liberia 2012 By KEMO CHAM | Wednesday, June 6   2012 at  18:09

A committee set up by the Liberian government to investigate the controversy surrounding the Miss Liberia 2012 beauty pageant has recommended that the pageant be cancelled.

The problem was caused by a disagreement between judges and organisers of the programme in April, whereby two different winners emerged.

The organisers had pre-empted the judges they had hired by announcing the Lofa County contestant, Leda Knowlden, as the winner.

This went against the judges’ choice of Montserrado County’s Brigitte Rouhana.

The Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism (MICAT) intervened by setting up a nine-member committee “to save Liberia from [this] embarrassment.”

The committee, headed by a former Miss Liberia, Oley White, on Tuesday released its findings, in which it said neither the choice of the judges nor that of the organisers was qualified to be Miss Liberia.

The organisers of the event blamed the judges, headed by Ghanaian Maxine Menson.

Information minister Lewis Brown, in a special press briefing on Tuesday, read part of the preliminary findings and promised to make public the full report later.

The decision leaves Liberia out of all the year’s competitions, including the Miss World pageant in China.

It was the same story in 2005 when judges and organisers disagreed on the final choice of the year’s Miss Liberia winner.

One of the contestants then, Munah Pelham, a lawmaker and former model, still believes she won. She came out firs runner-up.

Ms Pelham, who was a member of the judging panel in last April’s pageant and runs Liberia’s leading modelling agency, Munique Modelling Agency, is perceived by many of those who opposed the judges’ decision in the 2012 edition as the mastermind behind the saga because of her own experience.

She has resolved not to rest until the issue is sorted out.