Papua New Guinea has been selected as the host country for the 2010 Miss South Pacific Pageant while American Samoa and Tonga verbally submitted their interest in hosting the 2012 annual regional pageantry.

This was the outcome of last night’s meeting of the Miss South Pacific board of directors in Suva, Fiji— the host country for this year. Samoa owns the rights to the Pageant. (It was Tuesday night Fiji time when the meeting was held).

Pageant board member representing American Samoa, Virginia Samuelu, said via e-mail from Suva that the board’s meeting was held at the J & J Park Hotel Conference room. Presiding as chairperson was Sonja Hunter, the chief executive officer of the Samoa Tourism Authority.

(Samoa’s deputy prime minister Misa Telefoni, the pageant chairman, was unable to attend the meeting due to a conflict of official schedules.)

Present at the meeting were board members or representatives from the 12 Island Nations that have contestants for this year’s Miss South Pacific competition.

Board member from Papua New Guinea, Dadi Toka Jr. provided their presentation bid for hosting the 2010 Miss South Pacific in Port Moresby. It was put to vote and “unanimously endorsed” by the board and set for late November next year, said Samuelu.

Solomon Islands, who were supposed to provide an update on their intention to host the pageant in 2011, as indicated during last year’s board meeting in Pago Pago, was a no show at this board meeting, so the 2011 host country was not discussed further.

Therefore, Tonga verbally put forth their intention of submitting a bid to host the 2012 Miss South Pacific, and American Samoa also submitted verbally our interest in hosting the event in 2012. Tonga and American Samoa each have until 2011 to provide an official bid to host the Miss South Pacific in 2012.

At the meeting the current Miss South Pacific, Vanessa March, provided a presentation on her reign for the past 12 months.

The host country’s organizing committee provided their official week long program, names of judges and their backgrounds, as well as solidifying the criteria for the judges and providing information on the floats, as well as discussing the prizes for each category.

The board endorsed the program provided by the organizing committee with a slight modification. For example, the Board said they missed the “Miss South Pacific’s farewell speech and her final walk,” and noted that the current Miss South Pacific will pass on her crown and sash to the new reigning “Miss South Pacific” at pageant night. The final program was therefore amended to reflect this change.

Samuelu conveyed on behalf of Gov. Togiola Tulafono and the people of American Samoa, “our sincere appreciation for the hospitality and hard work provided by the Fijian Organizing Committee and ... Miss American Samoa is very appreciative of the effort put forth by the committee.”

Part of the competition begins tonight with the traditional attire & stage interview heading up to Saturday night (Friday local time) for the final night of competition and crowning of the new Miss South Pacific.

Pageant night will be aired live in American Samoa from 7:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. by PCS-TV Channel: 11 on Friday.