Last Saturday the first quarter final of Dainu Daina, the Lithuanian pre-selection for the Eurovision Song Contest, took place in LRT studios. Six performers out of twelve have qualified for the semi finals. It seems that some of the not qualifying artists find the results weird and not right.
This year LRT have introduced a new voting procedure for the country's Eurovision pre-selection. The votes are presented in Eurovision style, calling 10 Lithuanian regions and having spokespersons that present points from 1 to 12. Somes of the six not qualifying singers have expressed that in this way the results seem "bizzare".
The 2005 and 2006 national finals' participant Alanas Choshanu says: All voting was very bizzare. It looked like we had a Lithuanian Eurovision in TV studio.I don't really care if I go through to the next round or not, I just wanted to present my song. But I would like to know how many people voted for me, those points don't tell me anything". A. Choshanu hasn't qualified for the semi finals.
National finals' veteran Auguste (NF 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) thinks that the voting was "nonsense"." I don't understand how can we compare points of Vilnius and of some small city in Lithuania. In Vilnius we need thousands of votes to get 12 points. Meanwhile in a small citya hundred votes can be enough", says Auguste. In 2007 and 2008 Auguste was one of the favorites but this year she didn't even qualify to the semi finals.
Yesterday Dainu Daina's executive producer Jonas Vilimas answered the artists: "Vilnius is not all Lithuania. Every city has a right to express their opinion. This a contest for all Lithuania, it's even called Lithuanian song of songs. This way of voting is more objective. That's why wewill keep on deciding the winner using this model."
