Shweta: I was told to be the winner

Shweta Sekhon took to her Instagram and told her side of the story to address the recent controversy surrounding the National Costume competition held during the recent Miss Universe 2019.

The 22-year-old Malaysian beauty wrote in the post that contestants from 4 countries were briefed to be on standby as we were the Top 4 for National Costume in which Philippines was also part of.

“The entire day the crew went on finding my costume as I was told to be the winner. That is why I got into the costume too” she wrote.

During the pageant in Atlanta, after announcing that Miss Philippines had won the award, host Steve Harvey approached to interview Shweta who was the only contestant standing beside him on stage, to explain about her National Costume. Shweta corrected the host by saying “It’s not Philippines. It’s Malaysia”.

“Okay. Well, let me explain something to you. I just read that in the teleprompter. Y’all got to quit doing this to me. I can read… They’re trying to fix it now. See? This is what they did to me back in 2015″ Harvey responded.

Miss Universe organisers announced Shweta as the winner on their official Twitter account, to only later delete that tweet and post another tweet four hours later announcing Miss Philipplines Gazini Ganados was the rightful winner.

Miss Universe Malaysia national director, Elaine Daly, also took to social media to express her disappointment over the Best National Costume mix-up.

According to Daly, the president of Miss Universe Organisation Paula Shugart had emailed her to explain that the Philippines won the online voting, but the producing staff backstage picked their favourite and wanted to showcase Shweta instead.

“However, this was not explained on the show. To everyone who watched it, it was like as if Malaysia had won,” said Daly. “Because why would you put a delegate in her costume, have her do interviews and then tell her that she actually didn’t win but was just the producing staff’s choice?”

Shweta however graciously accepted that the win was not hers, and congratulated Miss Philippines for the deserved win.”I am totally fine with it because in my eyes, every girl that came to compete is a winner! Philippines or Malaysia, there isn’t any difference because we are ONE!!… Congratulations to the very beautiful @gazinii too!”