Miss Universe 2021 Harnaaz Sandhu faced the scrutiny of pageant fans last January 12 for her lackluster performance while hosting this year’s preliminary stage of the competition.
In particular, her biggest blunder of the night involved mispronouncing Kyrgyzstan multiple times. Instead, viewers noticed that the beauty queen had repeatedly said Kazakhstan whenever it was time to introduce the former country’s representative, Altynai Botoyarova.
After complaints flooded Twitter over Harnaaz's major oversight, the Miss Universe organization issued an official apology two days later via their social media page.
“Miss Universe prides itself in being an organization that gives women a platform to expose their culture to the world,” read their Twitter post. “In this spirit, our team is offering an apology to Kyrgyzstan for failing to correctly say the country’s name during Prelims. Our team promises to do better.”
As part of the reparations, they followed the tweet with a reply that introduced followers once again to Miss Universe Kyrgyzstan. As per the post, 18-year-old Altynai Botoyarova “is studying to become a designer and is also a professional model. She is also an activist in her country of KYRGYZSTAN.”
Altynai took to Instagram to acknowledge the apology. In a graceful response, she stated that she empathized with Harnaaz who “must have been worried. Sometimes there are such mistakes in excitement.”
She continued in her caption, “I am grateful to the Miss Universe management for recognizing this mistake and publicly apologizing for it by introducing me as Miss Universe Kyrgyzstan. Thereby proving your high level and professionalism.”
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