IT'S ALL OVER FOR ANDREA FONSEKA

By : CHEW WAN YING

AFTER THREE years as the reigning national director of the Miss Universe Malaysia Organisation or MUMO, it's all over for Former Beauty Queen Andrea Fonseka—the Miss Malaysia 2004 winner has reached the end of her pageant ruling career and will hand over her crown to a new national director.

Andrea bows out with a mixed bag of results. On the plus, she's breathed new life into the pageant with high-profile decisions like the selection of Deborah Henry as Miss Universe Malaysia 2011 and dragging the competition into the 21st century with a reality-styled making-of television series, Beauty Camp.

On the down, however, none of the Miss Malaysias under her direction cracked the Miss Universe ceiling, not even Deborah who placed in the Top 16 at the Miss World 2007 competition. To be fair, the closest we've ever come to winning Miss Universe was in 1970 when Andrea's mum, Josephine Lena Wong, broke into the Top 15.

Despite all the hype and hoopla surrounding Deborah, and all the talk that she would end Malaysia's losing streak at the pageant, we were once again let down when "the hot favourite" failed to impress the judges enough to make the Top 16 cut in São Paulo, Brazil.

"Learning from that, I realise so much depends on luck," an undeterred Andrea told Daily Chilli. "Instead of focusing on getting into the Top 16, we should focus on representing your country, which is what Deborah did. Everybody had such great things to say about Malaysia after her turn at Miss Universe last year."

"It would be wonderful to get on the international stage, but we're looking at [what the winner can] do for Malaysia in that one year leading up [to Miss Universe]," she added. "Instead of trying to make Miss Universe organisers happy, we have to focus on our part at home."

So what exactly does the job entail?

"We hold on to our culture," Andrea explained. "Tolerance is a very big part of Malaysian beauty—the ability to embrace differences. It doesn't matter what your race or colour is. These are qualities you should find in a Malaysian beauty."