BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

25/11/2006

Belarus: one more rule violation by Litesound band; Koldun submits new song

Stella Kosmas reporting from Athens (Greece)

Litesound band claimed to broke the rules

The Belarusians seem not to be aware of the rules of the European Broadcasting Union at all. They didn't even bother to read them. This is proven by the band Litesound who have performed in a concert their song which submitted to BTRC for the national selection. Litesound manager Andrey Starovoytov said: "rules do not prohibit concert performance at all". Besides the big laugh followed his statement, there is a clear rules which prohibits public or commercial presentation of the song either for sale, online or performance before a public audience. Following the news, the band now states that the song performed in Italy has the same title with the one submitted to BTRC's Eurofest. In a more arrogant way they said according to esckaz.com: "It doesn't matter what we were saying in interviews - there is no proof of that performance (nor video, nor audiorecordings) at all, and no information is published on the site of the fest about our performance as well", representative of the band added.

Dmitry Koldun replaces submitted song

According to his official website, Dmitry Koldun who seems to be so far the strongest favourite for the national selection, replaced his song entry "Get up" which violated the rules with the song "Angel mechty" (Angel of dream) written by himself. Of course we have no indication why BTRC has accepted Koldun's replacement after the submission deadline due and did not disqualified him immidiately, unless the song was already submitted. The only thing clear with Belarus this year is that the entire preselection is shadowed with scandals and rule violations and the national broadcaster is not doing anything to ensure the transparency of the national selection. At least this is the impression everyone get by reading news like that.

Source:

http://www.oikotimes.com/site/index.php?id=7010