Although singer Andre was a little nervous, however he managed to end the difficult dance number and make it to the finals. Let’s hope that the Armenian singer is more confident on stage today because he is the last to perform. That’s also Armenians’ luck-we are either the first or the last. We are “always” with the Turks too-female Turkish singer Sibel Tuzun will sing before Andre. It’s actually very difficult to see any chances for Armenia in the finals. There are a couple of factors. First, although the melody of the song is not Armenian, however it’s actually a performance on the “EuroVision” stage (after all, Armenian Public Television spent huge amounts of money for staging). In any case, after the semi-final, we were convinced that Andre has serious competitors-Dima Bilan from Russia, Elena Risteska from Macedonia, Harry Mata Harrin-Bosnia & Hertzegovina, Carolan from Sweden, Tina Karol from Ukraine, the Latvian “LT United” and Finnish “Lordi” groups-not to mention the 14 remaining groups from last year’s semi-finals.
But Armenia has a strong “weapon”, which can really be useful in times like these and that is the Armenian Diaspora. We hope that the Armenians living abroad, who are “dying” to see Mount Ararat, will pick up the phones and vote for our compatriot. We expect to get the highest number of votes from Russia. Of course, the voting is much easier outside of Armenia. However, we did experience yet another humiliation in Armenia. During the live broadcast of “EuroVision”, the co-hosts reminded viewers from time to time that they could only call and cast their votes when the voting actually begins. They also didn’t forget to mention that “ArmenTel” was one of the sponsors for the live broadcast. Just before the voting actually began, the Armenian co-host “reminded” citizens that the price for one minute is 324 drams, but he didn’t say anything about the SMS messages. Thinking that the message would cost the same, I decided to cast votes for some of the performers. I sent 6 messages according to the time foreseen for voting. After a while, I received a SMS message with the following: “Hello, we have taken in your vote. Thank you for participating in the “EuroVision 2006” song contest”. I received five other messages the following morning with a different note: “Hello, unfortunately the voting is over…” So, it turned out that due to the bad connection provided by “ArmenTel”, the SMS messages hadn’t made it before the end of the voting. But the most interesting is that “ArmenTel” “stole” 1700 drams for 6 SMS messages. It turned out that “ArmenTel” is not the one sponsoring “EuroVision”, but the opposite.