Eurovision has not seen anything like that

Azerbaijan has again given Europe a beautiful song, beautifully sung. It was all about love and passion. The rectangular glass podium represents the logic of life. But what happens inside does not depend on logic. Love, full of passion and emotion, turns the world upside down. Inside the transparent construction is a reflection of the soul - we go beyond the bounds of normal life when we are in love. And the point is not just that the legendary director-producer Fokas Evangelicos did a magnificent job in producing the number. The performer of the song "Hold Me" will be remembered for his confident delivery. One got the feeling that this young man has been comfortable on stage for years. There was no panic in his eyes or nervous tremble in his voice. Farid Mammadov showed beautiful body movement and choreography in what was technically a pretty complex number.

On the results of the voting the Azerbaijani entry came second in the contest behind the 20-year old Danish girl, Emmelie de Forest. The Ukrainian Zlata Ognevich took the bronze.

A predictable victory

Predictions that Emmelie de Forest would win "Eurovision-2013" were being made as soon as the contest got underway. She was the one being named by the two leading bookmakers, William Hill and Ladbrokes.

Emmelie de Forest has been singing in church choirs since the age of nine.  From the age of 14 she has been touring Denmark with the Scottish musician Neil Fraser, singing her own songs, as well as folk and blues versions of various hits from "Nirvana" to Johnny Cash. In 2011 she joined the Copenhagen Vocal Institute. Because Emmelie was born into a Swedish-Danish family she spent the greater part of her life in Sweden and speaks fluent Swedish which made her very popular in Malmo. The Danish press claimed that Emmelie de Forest had links with the British Royal Family, because her grandfather was allegedly the illegitimate son of King Edward VII. Later, however, the newspapers ditched this idea which was most likely a PR stunt. At the Danish qualifying competition the "Danish Song Grand Prix" Emmelie left the recognized favourites standing and was clearly the public's choice.  It was claimed that the young singer, who usually appears barefoot, "captured Danish hearts with her na?ve, innocent look". In the "Eurovision" final the Danish girl sang a simple but dramatic number. The barefooted Emmelie appeared on stage as the "Little Mermaid", and the drummers and flautist accompanying her evoked the fairy-tale images of Hans Christian Andersen.

You can't do without "well-wishers"

This year over 120 million viewers all over the world watched the twists and turns of the most popular "Eurovision" song contest. Azerbaijan received the highest mark - 12 points - from 10 countries: Austria, Israel, Hungary, Bulgaria, Russia, Malta, Greece, Montenegro, Lithuania and Georgia. At the same time, the winner - Denmark - received the highest mark from only eight countries. By all accounts, this gave rise to all kinds of jealous comments and at times accusations of vote buying by Azerbaijan. We will ignore the false videos allegedly showing people in Lithuania being bribed. Although if such a serious charge was going to be made the "facts" could have been fabricated more professionally.

In order to dispel all doubts about our second place at "Eurovision-2013" one needs only to glance at Farid Mammadov's entry and the results of the voting. Certain details should be born in mind. For example, whereas only one country - San Marino - did not give the Danish winner a single vote, nine countries did not vote for Azerbaijan, who, the "well-wishers" claim, bribed virtually the whole of Europe. Denmark got 70 odd, we had only 30 odd…

And yet… It is not clear why we should have to justify ourselves for our deserved second place when we can offer a convincing argument: My friends, we have already won "Eurovision" before and we don't really need another victory, especially from the financial point of view. For example, this year Turkey, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Czech Republic, Poland, Portugal, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Slovakia and Cyprus all declined to take part in "Eurovision-2013". All of them, with the exception of Turkey, gave economic problems as the reason for their decision. In the current difficult situation they decided to save money. It should perhaps be mentioned that the entry fee for each participating country is about ?100,000, which would be really ruinous for, say, Greece which is experiencing an extremely serious economic crisis. In addition, some European countries are afraid of victory: holding "Eurovision" in 2014 would be fraught with exorbitant costs and a sizeable hole in the budget. The fact that this year Azerbaijan had only fairly ordinary interest in the competition is shown by the fact that not even a single video clip had been made of the Eurovision number, which, generally speaking, is a tradition of the Eurovision entry.

But the justified predictions of the bookmakers speak even more convincingly of Azerbaijan's deserved silver medal. It was precisely those entries forecast by the bookies that finished in the first five of this year's contest. These included Farid Mammadov.

Incidentally, it is symbolic that in all the six years Azerbaijan's has entered "Eurovision" we have finished among the first five in different years. No other country has achieved that in such a short space of time in the history of the competition.

However another fly in the ointment at this year's "Eurovision" was the confusing situation over the counting of the votes placed by Azerbaijan in favour of the Russian entry. The results declared immediately after the final came as a surprise to many people both in Russia and in Azerbaijan. But still the fact was obvious and it managed to cause offence in Russian society. The fact that we did not give a single point to Russia was apparently beyond the bounds of elementary logic, not least because there is a sizeable Russian-speaking community in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is one of the few countries in the CIS where people willingly let their children learn Russian, which shows the high level of respect for Russian culture that there is here. It is no secret that the concerts of Russian artistes in Baku are usually held to a full house. And especially as the appearance of a Russian entry at "Eurovision-2013" was also worthy of attention. One can list a whole number of other arguments explaining why this caused anger in Azerbaijan. To the extent that the country's president, Ilham Aliyev, ordered an investigation into how the votes given by the Azerbaijanis in favour of the Russian entry were broken down. "Our president ordered an investigation to be carried out into this question and now the following picture is emerging: in Azerbaijan they voted for Russia and there was a certain number of votes, but the point is that all these votes are counted in Germany and the final result is, so to speak, relayed from there," Azerbaijan's ambassador to Russia, Polad Bulbuloglu, told "Vestnik Kavkaza".

As the director of Azerbaijani Public Television Camil Quliyev explained, according to the information coming in from the country's mobile operators, the Russian entry Dina Garipova got second place based on the results of SMS-voting, which should have unquestionably ensured a high final score in the Azerbaijani national voting in favour of Russia. We should note that the national jury also gave Russia a high mark.

One can only hope that this question, which has left a bad taste, will soon be cleared up. And I think this is of interest not only to Azerbaijan and Russia but also the organizers of Europe's most prestigious musical competition.

Be that as it may, the next "Eurovision-2014" song contest is due to be held in Denmark - the homeland of the famous Little Mermaid. Exactly in which Danish town the contest will be held will be decided in a month's time, but for now Europe is celebrating the deserved victory of the young Emmelie de Forest.