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Eurovision Song Contest 1993The Eurovision Song Contest 1993 was the 38th Eurovision, it was held in Ireland on May 15th and the presenter was Fionnuala Sweeney. Niamh Kavanagh was the winner of this Eurovision with the song, In Your Eyes. In the run-up to this contest, the European Broadcasting Union finally started to grapple with the explosion in the number of potential participating countries, caused by the dissolution of the Eastern bloc, and also by the disintegration of Yugoslavia, which had traditionally been the only communist country that took part in the contest. For the first time, then, a pre-qualifying round was introduced, but only for countries that had either never participated in the contest at all, or in the case of former republics of Yugoslavia, had not previously competed as nations in their own right. This was, however, merely a 'sticking-plaster' measure that was plainly not a sustainable solution for future years, as it would not be seen as remotely equitable. But in the meantime, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania and Estonia were left to battle it out in a special competition in Ljubljana on April 3rd for the mere three places available at the grand final in Millstreet. After some extremely tight voting, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia edged through. Results First Appearances Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia Voting Structure Each Country had a Jury who awarded 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 points for their top ten songs. The voting required a jury to deliberate in the midst of the on-going civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Warm applause rang round the hall as a voice on a crackling phone line was heard to deliver the familiar greeting, "Hello Millstreet, Sarajevo calling". It looked to be a lost cause for second-placed Sonia of the UK after the penultimate jury voted and left her eleven points behind Niamh Kavanagh. An expectant Irish crowd waited to hear the final jury award anything between one and ten points to either the UK or Ireland, any of which would have made it arithmetically impossible for Ireland to be caught. However, the name of neither country came up, with the ten points instead being rather eccentrically awarded to Luxembourg. This of course meant that either the UK or Ireland must have failed to pick up any points from the final jury, and if it was Sonia that received the maximum twelve points, the seemingly impossible would have happened and the UK would snatch a single-point victory at the death. Instead it was Ireland that were awarded the final points of the evening, finishing with what looked in retrospect a comfortable twenty-three point victory. The audience burst into a spontaneous chant of "ole ole", leaving the unflappable Fionnuala Sweeney to declare with due formality, but with a discernible glint in her eye, that "we have a winner..."
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