Scandal has rocked Eurovision 2019 as the grand final draws closer. The EBU has revealed that the Belarus jury has been dismissed and will not vote in the Eurovision grand final. This is a result of the jury members revealing their semi-final votes ahead of the final.
The EBU has confirmed that the jurors from Belarus have been dismissed. As per Eurovision rules, it is prohibited for jurors to discuss their votes before the grand final. The votes from Belarus will be determined by an “aggregated result” instead.
In an interview, the Belarusian jurors revealed a lot of information regarding their votes. While they did not reveal an exact breakdown, they discussed their favourites and stated that they almost unanimously agreed on their three winners.
Belarus in the first semi-final
The jurors each spoke out and cast some light on each of their votes. You can read their comments below:
- Anastasiya Tikhanovich – Revealed Australia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Greece and Slovenia as their favourites.
- Anzhela Mikulskaya – Stated that Australia topped her ranking and marked down Iceland.
- Artsem Mikhalenka – Did not explicitly reveal his favourites but discussed the performances of Georgia and San Marino.
- Olga Rizhikova – Revealed Australia, Czech Republic, Estonia and Georgia as their favourites.
- Valeriy Prigun – Revealed Czech Republic, Estonia, and Georgia as their favourites.
Previous jury vote issues
This is not the first time jury problems have plagued Eurovision. In 2017, Norwegian juror Per Sundnes was replaced on the jury after making comments against Irish representative Brendan Murray. In 2016, Russian juror Anastasia Stotskaya was replaced on the jury after streaming a video of the Russian deliberation process which showed part of her votes. Similarly, in 2014, the Goergian jury was disqualified after presenting identical votes for their Top 8. In that case, the televote accounted for 100% of the Georgian votes.
What do you think of the dismissal? How should the jury results from Belarus be determined? Let us know in the comments below.
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Swedish jury member Lina Hedlund voted the wrong way in the semi. That’s not much better. And she’s not a robot. Not even Jon Ola Sand.
I’m sorry but if you cheat you should be removed from the comp. Which would mean Belarus and their jury are out and if I understand correctly the next country in that semi should have replaced them which would be Poland .
I guess they listened when Zena said “Let’s break the rules.”
I come back to this topic. WTF were those points in final? Aggregated results? Here are the points that were given by belarussian jury … 1 pt Australia (6th at global jury’s votes) 2 pts Iceland (14th) 3 pts Serbie (19th) 4 pts San Marino (23rd) 5 pts United-Kingdom (24th) 6 pts Spain (26th) 7 pts Norway (15th) 8 pts Germany (21st) 10 pts Estonia (20th) 12 pts Israel (25th) Based on which standards those points were chosen to replace Belarus’ jury? I mean it’s normal to dismiss the jury but it’s stupid to give points to the countries that… Read more »
I think they gave the aggregated points extra to the countries that have the lower scores, so that the higher Placements were not spoiled by an arranged result. Sweden, North-Macedonia & the Nederlands were very close to each other poitswise. So if the aggregated result from Belarus would´t hade gave them points, maybe we had a different result,. And maybe they didn´t want the host-country receiving 0 points by the Juries.
Greetings from Germany !
Well, it seems possible. It would have been nice to do the same with the public from one country just to avoid you the “nul point” once again. Poor Germany. But I have to admit I laughed a little. You had Lily Among Clouds or Aly Ryan and Germans choose this…
If these were made up scores, it makes the real results even more appalling! The UK’s score decreasing to 8 points in total and Israel would have had ZERO Jury points
Why do they let juries vote the day before anyway? this also gives a chance for the artists to slightly alter their performances and also problems like this. they should just vote in the final in parallel with the public vote
I dont see why they have to create a fake result in these cases. Wouldnt a real punishment be that they just dont have a jury vote this year and embarrass them during the live voting by stating what happened and why Belarus has no jury vote.
Unfair to other contestants who can vote for Belarus but won’t get any points from them.
And the aggregated votes happened to give 0 points to Azerbaijan and we all know Belarus would have given 12 to Azerbaijan. Tell me how that is fair.
Lol, Israel 12p, if not for that they would be dead last with ZERO points from jury.
Now tell me what is “aggregated result”?
So I’m finally informed what “aggregated result” means: What if a country cannot deliver a valid jury result? Both juries and televoters award 1 to 8, 10, and 12 points in each country. In order to secure the 50/50 balance between jury and televoting, a national televoting result can’t be used as backup result for the jury. Therefore, if – for whatever reason – a country cannot deliver a valid jury result, a substitute result is calculated by the jury result of a pre-selected group of countries. These groups and their composition have been pre-approved by the EBU permanent services… Read more »
That’s… terrible. Giving free points to countries at the bottom of the table? I’d love to see it explained to Kobi.
Thanks for this post!
I checked it, and it does seem to add up to what you’re saying. Weird!! It makes sense of faking a jury vote based on historical voting similarities with other countries. But it’s totally bonkers that they use the reverse order! 😮
So 12 points from Belarus go to Russia tonight.
It does seems that in some parts of the Europe, rules don’t count for much
But Belarus is in the final?? 🙂
That kind of explain why Estonia qualified, though.
Belarus might just finish last tonight. LOL!
It was close
this angus is so boring….
Why the hell is wiwibloggs revealing what the belarussian juries have told they voted for? One of the key reasons to keep it a secret until the winner is chosen is to let the public opinion untouched from the jury votings.
As you are telling us how they voted you are ultimatly backing their dumb violation of that sepeating rule. Wiwibloggs – I am disappointed by you!!!
It’s not the job of the press to keep leaked things from their readers. It’s the job of the juries not to leak.
i think they kicked out Deban :D:D:D
I think Zena was higher than 10th place, therefore she has not taken Portugals and/or Hungary’s place 🙂
The less points to Russia the better. The song is boring and it feels cold on the stage. Belarus most probably would’ve given them 12 points.
DOWNVOTE ME IDFC ABOUT IT.
Can you just all move on? Portugal didn’t qualify, but so did many other countries and yet I don’t see anyone whining about them. Just sit down, relax and enjoy the show.
It is not Zena’s fault or indicate that her performance wasn’t “final worthy” if the juries messed up.
When are starting taking serious measures and disqualifying countries because of this?
This is unacceptable, same as the voting between Armenia and Azerbaijan’s juries.
What’s the voting between Armenia and Azerbaijan about? They don’t give each other points IIRC?
They rank each other dead last. Politics/military conflict stuff, I believe.
Like Lithuanian jury gives the last place to Russia every year, although Lithuanian televoters give 8-12 points to Russia.
Oh interesting.
actually jury gave 10th place for Russia in the final, not the last, it was only one year that they gave last place..
Thanks
Ridiculous.
What does ‘aggregate result’ mean in this context?
And given that it has been announced before the final started, you kind of have to wonder what that will do to the attitude toward/voting results for the Belorussian entry. I’ve always seen it as a16-20 finisher. Let’s see where it lands.
Jury votes are closed already, and nobody will know of this except for the people who read wiwibloggs and other Eurovision sites, which will be an incredibly small fraction of the total audience who vote in televoting. No impact on Zena’s chances (which are not stellar anyway).
I think it means that it’ll be arranged so that Belarus’ jury points won’t affect the overall result. For example if The Netherlands is jury winner, Belarus will give 12 to The Netherlands and etc.
no they will take into account the points awarded by Russian, Georgian, Armenian and Azeri juries, which means that Russia will get 3-4 points from Belarus, instead of higher points. In other years when the jury voting was annulated, it was replaced by televoting.
I still don’t understand :/
Serves them right.
Which means 24 points go to Russia 🙂 Anyway those jury members were non professional.
they’d give to Russia anyway.
They actually take an average result from the other jurys, not 100% televote, so this is actually bad news for russia
And they have just decided to do that? 4 days after Belarusian jury breaking the rule? Hm. Interesting. Seams like Russia is high with jury points 🙂
Finally someone sets his foot down to maintain the competition rules.
WTF Belarusian juries? you just has to wait with it like 24 hours.
“While they did not reveal an exact breakdown, they discussed their favourites and stated that they almost unanimously agreed on their three winners.”
well, it’s not really hard to see that it happens in many other countries, after seeing the rankings.
Exactly.
I think it’s not really hard to imagine that juries discuss about Eurovision. Just not on the Internet…