Eurovision conspiracy theories abound

Just four days have passed since the Eurovision final in Sweden and conspiracy theories abound, with Azerbaijan questioning the televoting system and Lithuania pointing fingers at Azerbaijan’s “lobbying” tactics.

These conspiracy theories are essentially much ado about nothing

Malta has been spared the blame, but social media users were bandying about theories on why Malta gave its “douze points” to Azerbaijan in the final for the second year running, contributing to its second placing in the contest.

Azerbaijan reciprocated with eight points both years. In 2011, Malta gave Azerbaijan 10 points.

Anton Attard, head of the Maltese delegation, said that ahead of the contest, Malta used social media to promote Gianluca’s song Tomorrow in several countries and Azerbaijan was one of the targets.

“We consider it to be fertile ground, in the sense that the chances of a campaign working there are high; the public is always very receptive to our songs,” he said.

Azerbaijan also campaigns actively in Malta year in, year out.

“Their singer, Farid, was on Xarabank so the Maltese viewers would have been familiar with him,” he said. Mr Attard pointed out that the jury’s vote made up just 50 per cent of the final result, the other half being in viewers’ hands through televoting.

“In fact, when you analyse last year’s split vote, the jury did not give top votes to Azerbaijan, but the overwhelming public vote pushed the final result to 12 points,” he said.

The split votes are usually made public about a month after the contest, as are the names of the jurors in each country.

“The jury is made up of people in the industry,” said Mr Attard, dismissing any possibility that they could be in any way influenced by other countries.

He said lobbying essentially entailed agreements with public broadcasters, such as BBC and the Icelandic public broadcaster, to feature artists on their channels.

“These conspiracy theories are much ado about nothing; the process is strictly audited by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU),” Mr Attard said.

Jarmo Siim, EBU communications coordinator, told Times of Malta that both the jury voting and the televoting were closely observed by PricewaterhouseCoopers, as well as by notaries in all participating countries.

He also confirmed that EBU had taken note of Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev’s inquiry into why his country gave Russia nul points in Saturday’s final. Russia, which placed fifth, gave the maximum 12 points to Azerbaijan’s ballad.

This is an incident that indicates there is more to Eurovision than singing and dancing: Azerbaijan has traditionally tried to maintain good relations with Moscow, though there have been tensions over energy in the past.

Meanwhile, a Lithuanian news site yesterday released video footage that they claim shows Azerbaijan buying votes ahead of Saturday’s Eurovision – with people being given SIM cards and told to vote repeatedly for Azerbaijan.

EBU is looking into the case, Mr Siim said, explaining that the tele­voting process was handled with “absolute professional care”, and detected any attempts at repeat voting.

“We believe the song contest’s apolitical spirit is a cornerstone of its enduring success, and we will do all we can to protect it,”he said.

None of this seems to have affected Malta’s contestant Gianluca and his band, who were yesterday congratulated by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and Opposition leader Simon Busuttil for placing eighth in Malmo last Saturday.