The online voting process to choose the twelve finalist songs to take part at Festival da Cancao 2009 will be over in just two days. Vote monitoring has been tough andthousands of fraudulent votes have been cancelled. With only 48 hours left, Luciana Abreu is still in the lead.

RTP is closely monitoring the online voting that is going through in order to find the songs that will take place in the Portuguese national final.Twice a day thousands of votes are checked and fraudulent votes are deleted. The public broadcaster considers that "votes coming from temporary Internet Providers in which no registry is necessary for the creation of e-mail accounts" will be removed". The statement was released on RTP's website.

RTP wishes to stress "the fraudulent votes are in no way related to the contestants" since the origine of the votes is unknown. This procedure is aimed at protecting their reputation.

Since the first day the song by Luciana Abreu Juntos vamos conseguir (Yes we can) has been in the lead. It has alreadypassed the ten thousand vote mark. At the time this article was written Eva Danin was in second place closely follwoed by the duet from Nuno e Fábia in third place.

The hype in the Portuguese media about Festival da Canção 2009 has been quite considerable compared to recent years. Many news and from cover titles have been published about the national final. It will take place on 27th Februray at Teatro Camões. The online voting ends at 23.59 GMTon Friday 30th January. You can vote here.

• Click here to enter esctoday.com competition to win invitations for the show here