Eurovision phone farce

THE EUROVISION Song Contest’s new voting system failed to impress at the weekend, as only three per cent of would-be voters in Cyprus actually got through.

Cypriot Eurovision followers jammed the lines on Saturday night to vote for their favourite song, with only 5,000 of the 150,000 calls registering a vote.

The problem would seem to lie with the short time allocated to voting — only calls made within a five-minute period were recorded.

This was the first year of the new phone voting system and in Cyprus 60 phone lines were assigned for the 24 phone numbers corresponding to the contestant countries. The 150,000 calls do not include calls that failed to get through due to congestion at the Cyprus Telecommunications Authority (CyTA) switchboards.

Political alliances were also a factor in the contest, Cyprus being the only country to vote for Greece’s entry. Cypriot voters gave 12 points to Greece, 10 to Israel, eight to the United Kingdom, seven to Croatia, six to Belgium, five to Malta, four to Spain, three to Norway, two to Portugal and one to France.

The Cypriot entry, Genesis sung by Michael Hadgiyiannis, scored 37 points, coming in 11th out of the 25 songs. It received points from Croatia (4), Greece (12), Slovakia (5). Israel (1), Malta (1), Hungary (1), Portugal (4), Romania (4), the United Kingdom (3) and Belgium (2).

The winner was the much-discussed transsexual, Dana International, representing Israel who scored 174 points. Despite protests by orthodox Jews that Dana’s participation in the contest would send “a message of darkness to the world”, the pre-contest publicity did not harm the prospects of Dana, who impressed viewers with the up-beat rhythms of her song, Diva.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.