On Saturday night, during the Grand Final, the EBU sent out a vague statement saying it had identified “voting irregularities” in six unnamed countries after the second rehearsals of the Second Semi-Final. Their jury votes were cancelled and replaced with a ” substitute aggregated result for each concerned country for both the Second Semi-Final and the Grand Final (calculated based on the results of other countries with similar voting records)”
Understandably, the above treatment caused a reaction from these countries as there had been no prior information and they ended up seeing a different score from the one they had given themselves.
Romania
On Sunday morning, Romanian television posted a lengthy statement on the official Eurovision page, which among other things said
“Romanian TV is fully committed to participate in Eurovision 2022, paying the participation fee and preparing, together with the WRS team, a project that won the appreciation of the public”
“We were surprised to see that the result of the Romanian jury’s vote was not taken into account in the final ranking, with the organisers assigning a different score on behalf of our country’s jury”
“We clarify that the Romanian jury decided to give the maximum score to the Moldovan representatives”
Furthermore, TVR, asks the EBU for the exact reasons why they made the cancellation of their committee’s score and they are able to make amends in case they made a mistake.
Montenegro
The Montenegrin broadcaster reacted in the same way
“Following the announcements made on the Eurovision website, we would like to inform the public that we have sent a request for clarification to authorised representatives of the EBU”
“Following the submission of our jury’s vote, the relevant officials stated that the RTCG vote was conducted in accordance with the normal procedure, was legally certified by the EBU, and they saw no reason to suspect any form of irregularity. We therefore await a detailed answer to the question of our vote change.”
Georgia
Georgia’s broadcaster, GPB, has issued a statement regarding the removal of the Georgian jury’s votes from Eurovision 2022
“The Public Broadcaster met all the requirements, sent the official document and received the EBU’s consent that there were no possible irregularities”
“The Georgian jury gave its highest score, the 12 points, to Ukraine. However, when the results of the Final were announced, the 12 points from Georgia were given to the United Kingdom”
“The Georgian delegation had no interest in manipulating the results. It was of prime importance for our jury to secure 12 points for a deserving contestant, which in this case was the representative of Ukraine”
The Georgian public broadcaster remains in active communication with the EBU regarding the current situation and hopes that official answers will be provided soon.
To date, the EBU has not yet clarified the exact reason why the votes of the six juries were removed.
What do you think of all this? Could much of the confusion have been cleared up if the EBU had given more specific information from the start? We look forward to reading your views in the comments below!
Source: Wiwibloggs, Eurovoix
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