Voting patterns in Europe

Some time has now passed since the Eurovision Song Contest was held and after listening to a lot of nonsense I would like to make my comments.

Since it is one of the few international competitions in which Malta very often does well, we always expect we have to win. It is very true that many times Malta had a very good and strong song and this year was no exception. But it is also true that many of the countries have good songs as well and there can only be one winner.

We have heard a lot of criticism about the voting system and this same criticism was made even when the jury system was used by all the countries participating. Often, Malta complains it did not get a better placing because we have no neighbours. One cannot deny that some countries give the maximum points to their neighbours due to strong ethnic minorities or linguistic influences but, nevertheless, some countries that do not have many neighbours have won the festival in the past.

Ireland has won the contest more than any other country, even though its only neighbouring country is the United Kingdom. Israel has won three times and its only neighbour is Cyprus, which anyway always gives maximum points to Greece.

When Turkey won in 2003 its immediate neighbour, Bulgaria, did not even participate in the contest. Inversely, Finland forms part of the Scandinavian bloc but always gets meagre points. The same goes for Lithuania, which is a Baltic country but always fails miserably and Macedonia, which is a Balkan country but never placed well.

On the other hand, France and Germany are surrounded by seven participating countries and have not won the contest for a very long time.

Ukraine was last year's winner and this year it fared poorly.

Besides this, I was disgusted at the way some members of the board and some television presenters urged the Maltese to vote wisely and some of them even hinted to us to vote for the worst song or nearly. This wise vote resulted in Malta giving maximum points to our "good friend", the Cypriot singer who was virtually ignored by the rest of Europe except Greece and we also gave some good points to the United Kingdom which also failed miserably.

Luckily the people of Europe did not vote for the worst song because, had they done so, Chiara would have got only a few points.

We all know what happens when the bad songs are voted for. In 2003 the Austrian singer with that red shirt secured the third place with a song which was disgusting, to say the least.

Congratulations to Chiara for securing a very good placing. Maybe she will be third time lucky! Hopefully, she will benefit from the success she has achieved.