I once met a girl whose pronunciation is pretty bad although not as bad as Miss Low’s. At first, I thought she was stupid as every time someone spoke to her, it would take a while for her catch what they were saying. It appeared as though she was blur, not tuned into the conversation.

But later, I had the opportunity to get to know her in person and discovered that she is a PhD student who is very well read. Her grasp of the English language is excellent due to the sheer number of books she had read, although she never mastered the ability to pronounce the words.

Don’t judge a girl by her pronunciation.
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Although Miss World is a beauty pageant, the fact still remains that she is representing the entire of Singapore, her personality, behavior, character, ethics etc, will come under scrutiny during the pageant. And lets not forget that the girls in beauty pageant are not just judged based on their looks, they are also judged based on their poise, elegance and most of all wit and language. Her responses on Razor TV totally did not portray someone with any intelligence much less any poise or elegance at all, to the point that I got embarrassed by her when I saw that clip. How do you think the rest of the world will react when they see her during the Ms World event? Can you imagine what will the rest of the world think when she opened her mouth to talk and all the atrocious English sprout out? We will just end up being the laughing stock of the entire world!

Yes, I agree that we should give past offenders a break and not judge them based on their past but this is a totally different issue altogether. She is representing her country in an international contest. Her conduct must be spotless otherwise she will just end up disgracing her own country. If she is just a normal person, not participating in an international contest, then its fine, but shes not. Whats worse was that she never even disclose anything about her past record before entering the contest, imagine if no one finds out, and she went on to South Africa and the committee found out about her past; what will the entire world think of Singapore? The first thing that perhaps will strike their mind is that we lack beauties in Singapore to the point that we have to rely on someone with her background to represent us?!

Seriously, I really have very strong doubts on the objectivity or the intelligence of the Ms World Singapore competition when they gave her the crown.

Nevertheless, a Miss World Singapore represents the country. She needs to be exemplary in her behavior and words.

My first set of questions is: Granted that we all make mistakes and we should give ex-convicts a second chance, what kinds of second chance should be given to ex-convicts? Would you give the treasurer position to someone who has a fraud track record? Would you first make sure that this person is trustworthy?

The second set of question is: What kinds of qualities is a Miss World Singapore supposed to have? Is beauty alone enough? Is a person with a fraud record suitable to represent the country? Would you have an ex-convict represent your company to discuss business deals with potential customers?
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however, imagine if she were to go ahead and represent us on the international platform, and the entire world were to hear her speak like that, what would the spectators think of singapore? we already have beyonce commenting that asians do not speak good english, we do not need miss ris low to further reinforce this.

but then again, the Q&A session is always the final few rounds. i’m pretty sure miss ris low will not get to that round. sorry, but that’s the truth.

you might argue that perhaps, unfortunately, she happened to speak like that only for that interview. but that is a proper interview that will be shown to the sg public. why would she think it’s ok to speak like that? maybe she panicked? and if so, at the competition, she would be facing much more audience live, would she fare better then? guess we will never know. but i’d rather not challenge that.

as for the fraud case.. if u refer to the miss USA pageants, beauty queens who had posed naked before had their crowns stripped. and here we are talking about a criminal case, even tho yes, it is not murder or arson we are talking about.

and if we allow her to represent singapore on the international platform, what next? an ex-convict for fraud for a MP?

‘Singapore doesn’t deserve to have her represent us after what we have done to her. ‘ i think you are making too big a deal with this statement.

having said all this, i believe she does deserve a chance, and really hope she can contribute to the society in other ways.