MaltaMedia.com

On Saturday evening, Chiara delivered a splendid performance of the song What If We at the Eurovision Song Contest final in Moscow, Russia. Chiara gave a very similar performance to the one on at last Tuesday’s semifinal, where she sailed on through to the final. However, in the end she disappointing placed outside the top twenty.

Norway’s Alexander Rybak singing his song Fairytale received top points from almost every country, garnering a total of 387 points. The song was the bookies’ favourite for several weeks and many pundits were surprised it actually won since it seemed that the contest offered many strong contenders this year.

The Maltese singer did her best but tough competition was expected not only from from the UK, Sweden, Iceland, France, Greece, Turkey, Ukraine and France. Morale in the Maltese camp was high after an excellent final dress rehearsal on Saturday afternoon, but the mood was rather sombre throughout most of the voting and immediately after the show.

Chiara is Malta’s most experienced Eurovision performer from Malta. She placed second at the final in 2005 in Kiev and third in her 1998 debut in Birmingham.

This year the European Broadcasting Union, who have been organizing this contest since 1956, introduced a new voting system. Points are now split between a professional jury vote of five professionals from each of the 42 participating countries and public televoting. People in each country can vote for any song except the one in the country they’re calling from. Each phone line may be used to cast up to 20 votes.

The new voting system was introduced to limit cluster voting among Scandinavian countries, the Baltic State, and the former Yugoslav republics, among others. As it happened, long-standing patters of voting were still evident to some degree or other.

The Maltese public gave 10 points to the UK and 12 to Iceland. British singer Jade Ewan sang at the Maltese local selection contest for the Eurovision back in January. Maltese Eurovison fans clearly love ballads.

Chiara and the Maltese delegation are expected back to Malta on Sunday evening.

For full coverage and other information go to EurovisionMalta.com.

See also Toni Sant’s Blog for his live reports from Moscow throughout this week, including special audio reports in collaboration with SBS Radio.