On the website of Serbian broadcaster RTS today, it was confirmed that the director of the station, Aleksander Tijanić, has written to Svante Stockselius of the EBU requesting that the results of their national selection are considered void. He also asks permission for a second final to be held in place, to salvage the participation of Serbia and Montenegro at the 51st Eurovision Song Contest in Athens.
Tijanić claims that the vote can be seen as politically motivated, a case which contravenes the rules. He supports this view by pointing to the fact that the same situation has now arisen two years in a row, and emphasises this year's jury voting figures as proof of this.
The new selection proposed would present five songs from the Serbian and five from the Montenegrin selection, and would be decided by televoting. It is for this new format that Tijanić now seeks EBU approval. It should be noted that the Montenegrin broadcaster, RTCG had already refused this proposal as acceptable at a board meeting of the two stations earlier this week.
You can read the letter (in Serbian) on RTS's Eurovision webpage. esctoday.com Editor Laura Gudim provides this English translation:
Dear Sir,
Due to the confirmation of injustice in the organisation and manner of the choice of compositions in the Evropesma/Europjesma 2006 Contest in Serbia and Montenegro, that is to say article 10, paragraph 2, and article 8, paragraph 6, I withdraw the votes of the juries, and conclude that in the work of this year�s juries, the rules in choosing our entry for this year�s ESC were not respected.
At the meeting of the management board UJRT, held on 14th March 2006 in Belgrade, it was concluded that great problems had occurred on the final evening of the contest held to choose the song to represent Serbia and Montenegro at ESC 2006.
The votes of the management board were divided (3 to 3), and a final decision could not be reached, as decisions in this board are taken by consensus. In this way, it was not possible to confirm Serbia and Montenegro�s representative at the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 in Athens.
The RTS Serbian part of the jury awarded the second placed Montenegrin composition 8 points in total, while the RTCG Montenegrin jury gave the first placed Serbian song 0 points in total. As this has happened for the second year running, I consider that a part of the Montenegrin jury is politically instrumented.
As all members of the management board have concluded that an urgent change in the rules of choosing the country�s representative is necessary, I propose that the EBU supports the suggestion that this year, given that this year�s voting system has led to such disagreement, the voting system used at the Eurovision Song Contest, that is to say telephone voting, is implemented as a temporary solution to choose Serbia and Montenegro�s representative for this year�s Eurovision Song Contest in Athens, so that the 5 highest placed compositions from BEOVIZIJA Serbia, Belgrade and MONTEVIZIJA Montenegro, Podgorica are performed by way of re-broadcasting the recordings of the final evening throughout the whole territory covered by UJRT, and the voting is done without expert juries; exclusively by TV viewers. In this way, Serbia and Montenegro�s representative for EUROSONG 2006 in Athens would be determined.
The story has already spread beyond the confines of Serbia and Montenegro and the Eurovision Song Contest fan arena, and has been picked up by several other news concerns such as the BBC and Sky News. More news is expected soon!
