VOTING PROBLEMS: UKRAINE AND ARMENIA COMPLAIN
Charlotte Jensen

EuroVisionary
/node/2553
May 19 2009

Ukraine complains about EBU forcing them to announce 8 points to Russia
when they insist that it wasn’t their points and Armenia is saying that
Azerbaijani TV wasn’t showing the voting number for Armenia properly.

Vice-president of the Ukrainian broadcaster, Roman Nedselskij,
says that they have written an official letter to EBU demanding an
explanation to why they were forced to announce 8 points to Russia. He
states that the Ukrainian jury gave no points at all to the Russian
entry and that both jury and TV viewers gave the maximum 12 points to
winning country Norway. This means that the Ukrainian TV viewers could
not have given Russia more than 10 points. With no jury points for
Russia the total result could therefore not be more than 5 points –
maximum. 2 minutes before Ukraine was to announce the points they got
a phone call from EBU telling them the points they had to announce in
the live show – including 8 points for Russia. "We got a shock when we
were told to announce that the Russian representative got incredible 8
points from Ukraine. It was pure manipulation", Roman Nedselskij says.

The Russian representative, Anastasija Prikhodko, is strangely
enough Ukrainian and Svetlana Loboda representing Ukraine is
Russian! Anastasija has however made herself unpopular in her home
country when she was disqualified in the Ukrainian national final
and afterwards apparently sent an official letter to the president
complaining about it!

Armenia and Azerbaijan aren’t the best of friends and this year’s
Eurovision Song Contest is not going to change that. The Armenian
broadcaster is accusing its neighbor country of deliberately
obstructing the number Azerbaijanis should call to vote for
Armenia. Armenia got no points from Azerbaijan while they themselves
awarded AySel & Arash with 1 point.