Evridiki out of Eurovision race

VIEWERS tuning in to tonight’s Eurovision song contest may find themselves looking for another singer to support as local entry Evridiki failed to make the semi-final cut on Thursday night.

Evridiki’s song ‘Comme Ci, Comme Ca’, which was considered a favourite to win the competition in British bookies, was ruled out of the final along with other favourites, such as Switzerland’s DJ Bobo, Belgium’s KMGs and Malta’s Olivia Lewis.

The new finalists are Bulgaria, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Serbia, FYR Macedonia, Hungary, Slovenia, Turkey and Latvia.

Various international media sources yesterday linked the selected entries to the geographical positioning of the countries chosen, suggesting neighbouring countries gave higher marks to each other.

The reaction over the selection of finalists was explosive in Greece yesterday.

The Greek media condemned the fact that Cyprus had failed to make it to the final, some stating that “the blocking of Eastern Europe worked perfectly once again”.

Furthermore, Greek viewers called in live to television shows to complain about the televoting service, which they said was not working on the night of the vote.

Other extremists even called on Greece to boycott next year’s Eurovision contest (provding it doesn’t win).

However, it wasn’t all positive comments for Cyprus.

Greek-language newspaper in England, London Greek News, was particularly scathing of Cyprus’ entry: “This was all predicted by the London Greek News despite much of the hype that Cyprus stood a credible chance to win the contest,” the paper wrote yesterday.

Blaming the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation’s (CyBC) failure to promote the song, London Greek News said CyBC was “the wrong organisation to gauge the feeling in Europe, pretty much all of its output is third-rate and its board is composed of ageing men with little or no real grasp of what the importance of public relations are in these types of events”.

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.