EBU & ICTIMAI RESPOND TO ALLEGEDLY VOTING RIG

Lithuanian newspaper 15MIN.LT through the website of which there was a post and a video presenting two Russian “fans” getting money to vote for Azerbaijan in the Eurovision Song Contest 2013, claimed a vote rigging by Azerbaijan.

Although there is no solid proof that the persons doing the “transaction” are members of the Azeri delegation or part of the Azeri team, the post took immediately huge media attention as Aftobladet called immediately EBU to ban Azerbaijan from the Eurovision Song Contest.

EBU REPLIES
EBU kindly replied to oikotimes.com: “Both the jury voting as well as the televoting at the Eurovision Song Contest are being observed closely by PWC, as well as by notaries in all participating countries. To process all televotes, we have been working with the company Digame for nearly ten years. Their platform is built to handle the televoting with the most professional care and systems are in place to detect any attempts of so-called power-voting, whereas people or systems would systematically vote in favor of a certain entry. Based on independent criteria, established by the EBU and Digame, and overlooked by a PWC observer, such unwanted methods of power-voting will not be counted for.”

12POINTS GOES YELLOW
On the other hand websites like 12points.tv aiming to attract some extra visitors as no one really visits them have made a transcript of translation with the video discussion. Since we don’t need all these million of visitors we proudly link to them so you can read the English translation of the story. They also don’t provide any proof that these men are members of Azeri delegation or team. On an update regaring the transcript posted by 12points.tv they “forgot” to mention that they also talk about voting Azerbaijan in the semifinal but no one thinked that Lithuania couldn’t vote in 2nd semifinal!

So could this just be a story just to accuse Azerbaijan out of jealousy? I can surely imagine a giant country making up this story! Unless they provide a solid proof that the story is valid we are currently laughing with the tabloid newspapers and websites bringing the story as a true one!

ICTIMAI REPLIES
Director General of the Public Television Jamil Guliyev has issued a statement on the fact of counting of the votes of Azerbaijani audience for Russia’s representative, APA reports quoting AzerTAc. The statement says: “Russia shares common interests, human values and finally common history with Azerbaijan. Today, the cultural and artistic relations between Azerbaijan and Russia may be an example for most countries, as well as neighboring countries. Performances of the Russian creative associations with high-level vocal and acting talents attract full houses in Azerbaijan. Performances of the Azerbaijani representatives attract the Russian audience in the same way. The highest point given by the Russian audience to Azerbaijani representative in Eurovision- 2013 proves it.”

The statement says that the high assessment is only the demonstration of evaluation of our country’s representative by the Russian audience. “According to the information received by the Public Television from national mobile operators, Russia’s representative Dina Garipova took the second place as a result of SMS voting and it unconditionally was to ensure high final evaluation to Russia in Azerbaijan’s national voting. The national jury also gave high assessment to the performance of Russia’s representative. It causes concern that not a point went to Russia in the final count of the votes from Azerbaijan. In this respect, one can understand dissatisfaction of the public, creative persons with this fact. We share the opinion that Russia’s representative was strong and demonstrated wonderful performance.

We consider that the high assessment given by the Azerbaijani audience as a result of SMS voting, as well as the assessment of the national jury is not adequate to the declared points. We strongly believe that the incident committed by certain interested groups will not cast shadow on the brotherhood of the Russian and Azerbaijani people.”