MOSCOW, January 13 (RIA Novosti) – After losing a contest to represent Belarus at Europe’s most famous song-and-dance extravaganza, a pop music duo is collecting signatures and appealing to the country’s president to nullify the results and let them perform at the 2014 Eurovision song competition.
Max Lorens and DiDyuLya, a Belarusian pop collaboration, lost to singer TEO in a second-round unanimous vote by the jury at the national finals last week to choose Belarus’ entry from among 14 contestants.
The duo had tied with TEO, whose real name is Yuri Vashchuk, with 20 points each after a vote by TV viewers and the eight-person jury.
Lorens and DiDyuLya decried the decision as unfair, complaining that they had gotten nearly 4,000 more votes from TV viewers than TEO and were more deserving to represent Belarus at Eurovision, to be held in Copenhagen in May.
“The members of the jury openly ignored the opinions of the people,” the musicians wrote in a complaint letter to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that was posted on local news portal Onliner. “Eight people have decided for the whole country.”
The duo asked Lukashenko to nullify the final results, saying the people’s choice should have won out over a jury vote, and started collecting signatures in an online petition to let them perform.
Lorens and DiDyuLya also said they would hold a concert under the slogan “For Fair Voting,” according to Onliner.
Success at Eurovision has become a matter of national pride for millions across Europe since the annual song contest was first held in 1956.
Denmark beat out 38 other nations to win last year’s contest, which was hosted in Sweden and watched by an estimated 170 million people.
Pop star Dima Bilan brought Russia its only victory at Eurovision in 2008, which Russian state-run media heralded as a sign the country was “finally making a return to Europe and reclaiming its superpower status in politics and culture, including popular music.”
