This year’s Eurovision song contest in Turin, Italy, went down not only with the victory of Ukraine, which has been torn by Russia-led war for now three months, but also some other scandals over countries’ voting. One of them is Azerbaijan, of which jury votes became controversial.
What happened on the final night: Before Azerbaijani announcer was about to appear on screen and announce the country’s votes, technical problem has reportedly emerged and connection was disabled between Baku and Turin. On the official Eurovision website, it is seen that Azerbaijan voted 6 points for Ukraine. But the country’s jury claims that they decided to vote maximum 12 points for Ukraine.
The same case occurred with Georgia as the country’s jury voted 12 points for Ukraine while the organizers announced 6 points for Ukraine and 12 for the UK.
What was decided: The European Broadcasting Union has removed 6 countries from the jury list: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, and San Marino. The reason was given that these countries’ juries attempted to manipulate the votes, and their votes weren’t counted as a result.
Azerbaijan’s Public TV, which is accredited to broadcast Eurovision from Azerbaijan, released a statement in the aftermath.
What does Public TV say:
- The names of the countries voted by the Azerbaijani jury were sent to the organizers of the competition. According to the list, 12 points were given to Ukraine. The organizers of the competition urged Public TV representatives to announce different results on the final show without giving any reasons. We have categorically rejected this request.
- An official letter of inquiry was sent to the organizers, and we said that we would announce the votes of the jury, and not the results that they want, and we wouldn’t make this issue public.
- During the semi-finals, it was reported that there was some irregularity in the votes of 6 countries, including Azerbaijan. However, no evidence has been presented so far.
- Despite the fact that the representative of Public TV was fully ready to announce the results of the jury voting from Azerbaijan during the broadcast, the organizers of the competition were not connected to Baku, but announced their results on our behalf.
- We did not have any technical problems to announce the votes live. We did not give the organizers any right to announce votes on behalf of Public Television.
