THE POLITICS OF EUROVISION, OR SELF COMES FIRST...

So it happened! Azerbaijan took 8th place in the Eurovision-2008 song contest, which is not that bad. But we could have performed better if...  Ah, how many "ifs"...  Let us say for starters that Elnur and Samir did their best. Their performance was one of the most eye-catching and spectacular in the show, which is an achievement for debutants in Eurovision. But when they set out to win the contest our guys forgot to take into account one nuance. At the Eurovision contest, like everywhere else, politics run the show.

How much is the music for the people?

Thus we should not have expected impartial scores for our duo's performance from Eurovision old-timers: neighbours voted for neighbours and eternal "vassals" voted for their "older brothers." It is already a standard pattern for Scandinavian countries to vote for each another, France gave Armenia 12 points and Armenia and Belarus each gave Russia's representative Dima Bilan 12 points. Estonia, where passions ran high last year over the dismantling of a monument to the Soviet soldier as liberator and which was accused of nationalism, displayed its political correctness. The Estonians gave the Russian performer the highest score. However, the Baltic country's gesture was not reciprocated.

But our neighbour Georgia, which gave the Azerbaijani duo just 7 points but was generous to the Armenian performer and gave her 12 points, disappointed us the most. It is funny, is it not? Tbilisi likes to talk about the wonderful "good-neighbourly" relations between the two countries and thanks us for support in times of difficulty. But Georgia's true gratitude to Azerbaijan was demonstrated only too clearly. Again politics, and the mind visualizes oil, gas and transport corridors. It is not in Azerbaijan's character to do good to someone and then keep reminding about it. So help them God.  After all, we should not forget that some of the Georgian vote for the Armenian singer came from her fellow ethnic Armenians who reside in Georgia (about 600,000 of them).  But we say this just to keep our temper.

Our brother Turks also puzzled us. They gave Elnur's and Samir's performance 12 points, but did not forget at the same time to give the Armenian singer 10 points, although Turkey too has a large ethnic Armenian community. In reply, the Armenians ignored their politically correct neighbour entirely and gave their vote to Greece, Georgia and, naturally, Russia, whose "outpost" their country is.  Some advice to the Turks for the future: "Don't cast pearls before swine."

Not neighbours, but friends

In the mean time, Hungary's and Macedonia's scores for the Azerbaijani duo - 12 and 8 points respectively - pleased us. Ukraine too gave a good score, 10 points, to Samir's and Elnur's performance. The top score, 12, went from Ukraine to Russia, which, for its part, gave Ukrainian beauty Ani Lorak only 8 points. But the saddest part of this whole story is perhaps the fact that the majority of the Azerbaijani audience were unable to vote for their favourite performer. The phone lines were overloaded, and the short messages never reached their destination. It is sad that our phone companies did not take that into account.

As for the results, the dream of Russian performer Dima Bilan, who had apparently decided to wear Europe down by attrition, finally came true. Bilan, who was second in the contest two years ago, received 272 points, thereby beating his nearest rival by 42 points and was declared the winner of Eurovision-2008.  Third place went to the young Greek singer Kolomira, and fourth was Armenian singer Sirusho, thanks to the well-coordinated voting of the Armenian communities which are dispersed all over the world. Incidentally, the girl has no special talent. The Armenian delegation staked its chances on the singer's exotic looks (for Europe) and her sexually suggestive dance (in the Armenians' opinion). Nonetheless, Europe took the bait and the Armenian diaspora rejoiced. I wonder what the ethnic Azerbajanis who live in Europe were doing at that moment. We hope that they were doing something very important and serious because they apparently did not hear the urging of our artistes to support Samir and Elnur. Or maybe our compatriots decided not attach any importance to the Eurovision contest? After all, it is just a song contest and nothing more. If so, they were wrong. It is exactly these types of "just contests" that form the country's image. Perhaps it would make sense to learn from our own mistakes and unite for just one day by sitting in front of the TV screen and voting for our country? We very much hope that the Azerbaijani performers' second attempt to represent their country at the Eurovision contest will be more successful and, for starters, will be among the top three places.