A young Guyanese woman of Berbice, Region 6, Guyana, South America has described a negative experience running for the Ms. Jamzone 2023 Crown. Clendolita Lashley was the most popular contestant according to the Instagram voting mechanism set up by the Jamzone Administrative Team. Despite garnering the most votes, she was not crowned the winner. The rules, which were initially that the photo with the most Instagram votes wins, changed midway through the selection process, and new rules were appended. Ms. Lashley feels cheated and discriminated against. She said, “I’m never doing anything for Jamzone again.”
This is her story…
A lot of people are asking me how I did not make it to the Miss Jamzone 2023 semi finals. I don’t know and I’m still trying to figure that out myself. But I know when people are threatened by you, they tend to eliminate you.
When the voting started on Instagram, they kept reminding us that the persons with the most likes+votes will be moving on to the semi finals.
As soon as I got the most likes+votes, that’s when other rules came in from nowhere. Apparently I was not supposed to surpass their favorite delegate with the votes. They tried their best to eliminate me by having some committee voting, by having the trainer voting, and only 10% of the social media votes counting all of a sudden.
During our first training session, Mr Khan, who is said to be some director or manager for HJ, I don’t really know, he somewhat congratulated me by saying with a smile of course “Lashley I see you have over 4000 likes on Instagram followed by the person with the second highest likes,” and went on to say, “not because you have so many likes means you will move on to the semi finals.” That automatically triggered my brain and I asked myself if I still stood a chance.
During Soca and Wine Night, when they were going to select the 9 semi finalists, a popular DJ who was there with them sent to call me and said there was a meeting and that they are not going pick me because they had a certain individual that they want to win. I thought he was joking when he said that but he was not. People are saying that I messed up on stage and didn’t walk properly and what not, but was I the only one who messed up??? I don’t think so. Other persons messed up too, persons that did not even reach halfway with the votes that I had, but were given second chances. I’m hurt.
If I had a little sister who wants to take part in Miss Jamzone Pageant, even if she were a social media favorite, I would encourage her not to take part and to go for something bigger that makes sense.
