The EBU has confirmed to Eurovoix that the Belarussian jury has been dismissed from the Eurovision Grand Final.
The confirmation comes after the jury members from Belarus revealed, in an interview with Tut.by, who they had voted for during the first semi-final of the contest on Tuesday. This is in contravention of Eurovision rules which provide that the results of the semi-finals are not to be revealed until after the Grand Final.
The Eurovision Press Team confirmed to Eurovoix:
The Belarussian jury voting has been revealed in an interview contravening Eurovision Song Contest rules. In order to be compliant with the ESC voting regulations, the EBU has taken action and has dismissed the Belarussian jury from the Grand Final on Saturday. An aggregated result approved by the auditors will be used in order to determine to whom the Belarussian votes will be allocated.
After the semi-final on Tuesday,ย Mr Valeri Prigun, the Chair of the Jury, told Tut that:
We determined the three winners almost unanimously.ย In general, in the first six or seven places we had almost no disputes.ย They started in 8-10th places.ย Then we met for about ten minutes.
Furthermore, additional jury members revealed which nations they liked during Semi-Final One:
- Angelina Mikulskaya โ stated that she voted down Iceland, Australia topped her ranking.
- Valeri Prigun โ Estonia, Czech Republic, Georgia.
- Olga Ryzhikova โ Estonia, Georgia, Australia, Czech Republic.
- Artyom Mikhalenko โ Did not state his favourites, but commented on the performance of Georgia and San Marino.
- Anastasia Tikhanovich โ Georgia, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Greece and Australia.
Belarus will be represented by ZENA with the song “Like It” in the final of the Eurovision Song Contest this evening in Tel Aviv. She will perform in slot 19, having qualified from the first semi-final.
Source: EBU
Do they seriously have no idea what the rules are, or do they just hate the Eurovision that much?