Serbia With "Prayer" Wins Eurovision 2007 Song Festival

To Finland's credit it must be said that the contest was very well organized. Twenty four contestant countries, mostly from Eastern Europe competed for the vote of European music lovers. Helsinki hosted the festival in a very friendly and international spirit.

Serbia, Spain, Bulgaria, Armenia, Ukraine, Slovenia and Russia really stood out with the songs they performed.

Voted did go very good as they were being collected from all over the Europe. First voting results came from Montenegro that gavem 12 points to Serbia. Armenia gave 12 points Russia.

Ukraine and Russia took leadership right from the beginning. At some point Serbia took the leadership. France had an interesting voting - 10 points to Armenia and 12 points to Turkey.

This story is being written as the voting is being announced.

Turkey started doing very well after they announced Denmark's voting that gave 10 points to Turkey.

At Eurovision it's really hard to say which country is going to win because it depends on country friendships and on the people musical taste who are watching the show at late night.

So far the first three places of Eurovision 2007 are shared between Ukraine, Serbia and Russia.

Last year Turkey gave high point to neighboring Armenia. Two countries do not even have diplomatic relationship. This year, Turkey again amazed by giving the highest 12 points to neighbor Armenia. This is wonderful and a good step toward normalizing relations between two nations. It should be noted however, that there is a large Armenian diaspora in Turkey. However, good for Turkey.

One thing that is being noticed is that neighbors vote and promote neighbors. This is not bad. However, this may be a factor in seeing many Balkan and Eastern European countries going forward.

UK was not doing good at all, so far no votes for UK. Half way during voting result announcements they took a break and approached singers from UK to cheer them up.

Serbia is clear leader thanks to many Balkan voting. Serbia did sing well with an interesting approach to singing.

Lithuania gave 12 points to Georgia. It should be noted that Georgia had a very nice song: European approach and Georgian style background dancing.

It looks like the tradition of neighborly promotion in Eurovision is continuing as Sweden gets 12 points from Finland, Armenia gets 12 points from neighborly Turkey and Georgia, and Belarus gets 12 points from Ukraine.

So Eurovision 2007 song winners is Serbian singer Marija Serifovic, who performed "Prayer"

Armen Hareyan for HULIQ.com