On Monday the Estonian broadcaster, the Estonian Television (ETV), announced that 153 songs has been received for the national final, Eurolaul 2004.
This number is again a record for Estonia, as last year 100 songs were sent in, which was the highest number so far. None of the songs were disqualified this year. Now the jury will choose the top 10 songs and the results will be announced on Thursday in a short TV-show at 22:05 EET.
At the same time a small scandal arouse. On the e-mail sent to Estonian media, composer Sven Lõhmus (Club Kung – Fu, Estonian preselection 2003) is said to have claimed that ETV is cheating in the voting procedure. At the same time there are serious doubts about the senders name and reliability.
“I took the closed envelope filled with 4 ginger-snaps to ETV to test the fairness of Eurovision Song Contest. The envelope was closed three times to be completely invisible,” wrote assumingly Sven Lõhmus.
According to the composer it shows that the envelopes are opened before the jury meets. “This is the reason I will never take part in Eurovision again, because the final result is not objective and breaking the rules is verified“, the author of an e-mail added.
The final will be held on 7th February 2004 at the studios of ETV.
