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New people will be put in charge of preparing Belarus' Eurovision entry, Lukashenka says

New people will be put in charge of preparing Belarus' entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, Alyaksandr Lukashenka told reporters on Friday while visiting his native village of Aleksandryya near Shklow, Mahilyow region.

Work on new ideas began as far back as a week ago, the Belarusian leader said. "Everything will be replaced, including the company and the people," he said.

Mr. Lukashenka expressed dissatisfaction with Belarus' performance in this year’s Eurovision contest. "I'm pretty much fed up with this babble, fighting and what not," he said. "Old trash and junk, there's no other way to describe it. They gathered around it for self-publicity and, to top it all off, they may now be dividing money among themselves. We'll find everything out."

Speaking about Belarus' contestant Pyotr Yalfimaw (Petr Elfimov), Mr. Lukashenka said, "They complained to me a month or a month and a half before the contest," he said. "I finally got tired and said, 'Don't get in the way. We've chosen him and cannot replace him. Let's not participate [in the contest] at all this year if he gets too wayward.' We decided to participate. The result is known."

The 29-year-old Mahilyow-born Yalfimaw missed out on the final of the contest, placing 13th of the 18 contestants in a semifinal on May 12.

However, he said that his performance was superb and accused the national delegation and Belarusian journalists of the lack of attention to him. He announced that he would complain to the head of state. “I have much to say to the president, from organizational to human matters,” Mr. Yalfimaw told BelaPAN upon his return to Minsk. “Before going to the Eurovision, I had said much and tried to draw attention to many things, but nobody had listened to me or my manager.”

Belarus placed sixth among 42 contestant nations in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2007. That relative success was given ecstatic coverage by Belarus’ major television networks, which described it as a great achievement of the country as a whole and a victory that Belarus had been working for for four years.

Mr. Lukashenka extended official presidential thanks to the singer, Dzmitry Kaldun, and to Alyaksandr Tsikhanovich, director of the Belarusian State Television and Radio Company`s Eurofest program, “for the efficient preparations for the contest, which ensured the successful performance.”