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The Final of 2010 Eurovision Song Contest is due tonight and the Armenian representative Eva Rivas is one of the pretendants to win with her song “Apricot Stone”.

Naturally, bookmaker offices also actively follow the contest. Eva Rivas is among top 3 leaders. By now the top 3 leads Azerbaijani Safura, second is Germany’s representative, Eva Rivas is third. Israel and Turkey follow.

However, Armenian journalist, political expert Artyom Yerkanyan is convinced that the indices of bookmakers not always prove objective.

“Azerbaijanis make special stakes to increase their representative’s rating; hence, it would be more correct to trust the ratings as formed by the music critics and the reporters covering the contest. The latter speak for us,” Yerkanyan said on Shant TV adding that Eva Rivas is second according to the votes of the reporters covering the event and takes over the Azerbaijani.

As far as the role of money goes, which is very often referred to, according to Artyom Yerkanyan, unfortunately, Azerbaijan’s infringements were not duly investigated last year, particularly, the results of the investigation carried out by reporters in Belarus last year showed that representatives of Azerbaijani community in Belarus bribed the students of the country so that the latter vote for their representative.

Besides, they were taken to Lithuania and distributed SIM cards of Lithiania, so that they could vote both with the cards of Belarus and Lithuania. Thus, Azerbaijan received 12 points from Belarus and 10 points from Lithuania. Yerkanyan said, investigation showed Azeris spent 55 mln. roubles for this affair. All this, unfortunately, remained uninvestigated. It is feared this can re-occur this year.

According to Yerkanyan, Azeris are concerned over Eva Rivas high rating and are trying to discredit her. As far as Safura is concerned, actually, she has realized she could stay behind Eva Rivas and said: “For me it’s important to perform well and I am not going to pay attention to how well Armenian representative will.”

By the way, reporter of Russian “Inter Novosti” agency Yevgeny Nemtsov writes that Azerbaijani Safura has yielded her positions as a result of the reporters’ voting during the recent days.