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Fiji’s Merewalesi Nailatikau has fulfilled the eager anticipation of her home country by winning the coveted Miss South Pacific crown, saying the win was not for one country alone but for the entire South Pacific.
Nailatikau, 24, was crowned at Suva’s Albert Park tonight ahead of four other regional finalists who all picked a question from a hat and responded impromptu to help the five-member panel of judges to decide on a winner.
Responding with her usual eloquence to the question of whether hitting children as a means of disciplining them should be outlawed in the Pacific, Nailatikau said dialogue was essential to look for alternative means in a region where it took “an entire village”, from the family to the church pastor to the school teacher to raise a child.
Immediately upon being crowned, she stepped with the same ease into the shoes of South Pacific ambassador, sending out a strong clear message on the region’s fight against climate change.
“I cannot tell you how thankful I am and I thank God for our beautiful South Pacific,” she told a crowd that had cheered her from the moment her name was announced among the five finalists earlier in the evening.
“Our challenges will shape us into better and stronger people,” she said, teary eyed and quickly regaining her composure.
She said there could have been no better reward than the unity and friendship that had been shared among the 12 pageant contestants and that the experience had proven for her that “unity is possible if you place your differences aside and work for a common goal”.
Connecting that experience with the pageant theme of protecting the Pacific environment and the threat of climate change, Nailatikau said the region needed to stand together to tell the world that “a threat to one of us is a threat to all”.
Miss Cook Islands Engara Gosselin was first runner-up, Miss Aotaroa Pacifica Paretaunu Randall was second runner-up, Miss Solomon islands Milicent Barty was third and Miss Samoa Tusisaleia Pomele was fourth runner-up.
