This years German representative Gracia Baur (22) still faces heavy attacks. Now that her Eurovision entry Run & hide is banned from the official Top 100 singles charts after serious accusations of manipulating the sales numbers, Marco Mathias and Nicole Süßmilch, runners-up of the German final, want her to resign. “Gracia stole our victory”, Mathias told newspaper Express.
Mathias demanded that Gracia withdraw and made clear that he is ready to go to Kyiv instead, together with his duet partner Nicole Süßmilch. Mathias & Süßmilch (pictured), two former casting show participants like Gracia herself, finished second in this year's German final with their Siegel-written entry A miracle of love. They got 47% of the votes, compared to 53% for Gracia. “I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't everything okay with the voting, too”, Nicole Süßmilch said in Bild.
Again, Jürgen Meier-Beer, head of the German delegation, made clear that “either Gracia sings for Germany or nobody”, as, after 21 March, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) does not allow nations to change their representative. Broadcaster NDR double checked the results of the televoting after the first accusations against Gracia were made public and found no sign of vote rigging. Two days ago, Meier-Beer also made clear that he would have accepted Gracia as a participant in Germany 12 Points even without a wild card.
Meanwhile, Gracia may face legal action after she accused her colleague Jeanette Biedermann (participant of the German final in 1999). In 2002, accusations of charts manipulation were raised against Biedermann's record company Universal, but were not further investigated, as there was only a very small number of suspicious sales. Universal now threathens to sue Gracia.
TV station SAT.1, whose show AKTE05 brought up the whole case some weeks ago, announced that it will present some new witnesses and data in the chart manipulation scandal in today's show (22:15 CET).
