Alessandro Mahmoud, an Italian-egyptian artist, who competes under the name of Mahmood and whose contribution contains words in Arabic, won in the weekend of the Italian eurovision song contest with 60% of the vote against competitor Ultimo who got 40%.
Matteo Salvini tweeted that it was ”the most beautiful Italian song”, which won the. He was joined by Luigi Di Maio, the leader of the largest party Femstjärnerörelsen who argued that the results showed ”an abysmal gap between the people and the ’elite ‘ because the jury who voted him, according to Di Maio on Facebook, consisted of ”journalists and radical”.
the singing competition has in the past been surrounded by political overtones. Tv programme, hosted by Claudio Baglioni ended up in the fire after to have called the Salvinis refusal to accept 49 refugees as ”farcical”. According to the reporters of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the choice of Mahmood as the winner has been a way for sångjuryn to set a political example to the government.
