Organizers stand behind Miss Vietnam despite graduation scandal

Some of Dung’s former teachers also said the beauty queen’s end of year report appeared to have been forged.

Under a Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism regulation, only high school graduates are allowed to enter national beauty pageants.

The Miss Vietnam 2008 website states high school students are also eligible.

But Nam told a hasty press briefing Friday in HCMC that he thought a draft regulation to omit the graduation requirement had been implemented “in June or July this year.”

“We announced the contest’s regulations in newspapers for more than three months,” he said.

“We thought the regulations had been made official because nobody objected.”

However, head of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s Department of Performing Arts, Le Ngoc Cuong, said: “They are words of sophism! Organizers are required to inform us about any modification to regulations. They can’t just decide like that.”

At the briefing, Nam refused to give the number of contestants who hadn’t graduated high school, saying it would take months to find out details from the 2,000 contestants.

Nam also refused to comment on Dung’s alleged fake school report and said contestants weren’t required to submit them.

A lawyer from Da Nang Bar Association, Do Phap, said forging seals and government documents was a serious offence with penalties of up to three years imprisonment, but probably not in this case.

An official from the Government Office, Chu Duc Tien, said, “I am not clear about Dung’s end of school year record, but she didn’t violate the Miss Vietnam 2008 regulations.”

“I told Duong Xuan Nam that he was wrong to have applied the draft regulations,” he said.

“In my opinion, the organizers should be criticized. They will be required to make a report to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, who will consider their motivation and the seriousness of the violation.”

Reported by Huong Lan – Vu Phuong Thao