Venezuela’s courts have ordered the organizing body behind the famous “Miss Venezuela” beauty pageant reinstated over a week after it was suspended over a lawsuit.
Beauty pageants are a cherished cultural tradition in Venezuela, which continues to organize the lavish events despite going through the worst economic crisis in its history.
“In agreement with the Miss World Organization, the edition of Miss Venezuela 2018, which will take place in the last quarter of the year, will allow selecting the country’s representative for the Miss World 2019,” the organization wrote on Instagram. “As such, the winner of the Miss Venezuela pageant 2019, will represent us in the Miss Universe 2019.”
The announcement comes nearly two weeks after a Venezuelan court suspended the competition after last year’s winner, Veruska Betania Ljubisavljevic Rodriguez, filed a lawsuit after being forbidden from competing in the Miss World 2018 competition in China this December.
“I am actively fighting for my rights as a woman and a Venezuelan, and ask that I be given back my right to represent Venezuela at the next Miss World pageant,” she said at the time.
The contest organizers said they were forced to restructure the competition and select a new beauty queen to represent the country amid allegations of prostitution and corruption that saw the resignation of the franchise’s former president, Osmel Sousa, after 37 years at the helm.
Ljubisavljevic and the Miss Venezuela competition have now reached an agreement where she will be able to compete at the Miss World 2018 competition and has desisted her legal case.
Ms. Ljubisavljevic decided to desist from the court action she had filed against the Miss Venezuela Organization and, therefore, to renounce the precautionary protection that prevented the completion of Miss Venezuela 2018,” the organizers added.
Beauty pageants are a longstanding tradition in Venezuela, sometimes described as a national sport for the fervor it creates among Venezuelan citizens. The huge number of Venezuelan women eager to compete in competitions has also fuelled a million-dollar plastic surgery industry that has continued to thrive despite the collapse of the country’s healthcare system under the pressure of the country’s economic collapse.
The competition has more recently drawn criticism amid Venezuela’s catastrophic economic crisis under socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, where millions of people are living in dire poverty, with many in need of humanitarian assistance. As such, thousands of people continue to flee the country every day to escape chronic shortages of food, medicine, and other basic living resources in what is now one of the world’s most pressing migration crises.
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