Eurovision voting row spreads from Moldova to Poland
A bad example can be contagious. After Moldova, a new scandal over Eurovision voting has erupted in Poland and this time it quickly took on an international tone.
Tobiasz Bocheński, deputy chairman of the main opposition party Law and Justice, called for Poland to rethink its relations with Kyiv after Ukraine awarded no points to the Polish entry.
“If our singer receives the maximum number of points from the Germans, a very high score from the Austrians, and then suddenly zero from Ukraine and Israel, then in my view this is a reason to reconsider our relations,” the Polish politician said.
Poland’s song was not a favourite
The song “Pray”, performed by Polish singer Alicja, was never seen as a likely winner. It received mixed reviews and eventually finished in the middle of the table, taking 12th place.
Of course, music is a matter of taste. Every jury and audience votes for what they like.
But Bocheński, who is not a music critic and is not known to have any musical background, apparently decided that the Ukrainian vote required a political response.
Strange priorities in Warsaw
His priorities are, to put it mildly, selective.
The glorification in Ukraine of figures such as Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, associated in Poland with the massacre of Poles in Volhynia, appears to provoke less emotion in some political circles than a Eurovision scorecard.
In that sense, the row says as much about Polish politics as it does about Eurovision. Even a song contest is now being pulled into the wider dispute over how far Warsaw should go in tolerating Kyiv’s gestures or lack of them, while continuing to present the relationship as one of unquestioned solidarity.
