I am completely in shock. I don’t understand how this is possible,” says Mae Liewes from Eindhoven on the news that her idol has been disqualified from the Eurovision Song Contest. The 19-year-old megafan was already on her train to Leeuwarden to watch the final on big screens.
EBU
With a deep sigh, Mae answered the phone from the train on her way to the Frisian capital on Saturday. What should have been a great day suddenly turns into a nightmare for her when it turns out that the singer will no longer be allowed by organiser The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to compete in the Song Contest in Malmö, Sweden.
The organisation is awaiting the investigation into a complaint filed against Klein for threatening a female TV worker. Mae can’t imagine that her idol would go wrong just like that. “Something must have happened that made Joost say something. Why would he be so careless about it if this is his big dream?”
Big dream
This is precisely why she finds it so sour for Klein. “This was always his big dream. He wanted to do this for his late parents. Then you finally stand there, and that dream is taken away from you a few hours before the final,” Mae says disappointedly.
What bothers her most is that she still does not know what Klein was disqualified for. “We still don’t know at all what happened,” she says. The organisation speaks of a zero-tolerance policy around undesirable behaviour, but Mae thinks that is unfair. “So why let Israel compete?”
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Mae constantly checked the latest Song Contest coverage with her friends on the train. “That’s quite tiring and stressful, but we continue to support him no matter what.”
One of the ways she does that is to stop watching the show. Still, she continued her way to Leeuwarden. “That we spent so long on the train was sour, but friends of Joost were coming to perform. To support him, we watched that. I’m not going to watch any more.”
Two sides
Mae does hope there will soon be more clarity about the reason for the disqualification. “I would think it would be neat if they still come up with an explanation as to why he was disqualified. Now, everyone is left with questions. There are always two sides to a story, and it is unfair to pick one side now.”
Source: Studio040.nl
Translated by: Anitha Sevugan
