Cyprus is pinning its hopes on the voice of a school pupil for this year’s Eurovision song contest in Moscow. The song ‘Firefly’, sung by 16-year-old Christina Metaxa, came out winner by a huge margin during last Saturday’s competition on CyBC.

Ten entries were heard before the winning song was chosen by viewers calling in. For the first time ever, a Turkish Cypriot entered the national final with a song written by a Greek Cypriot. Zelish Senon garnered 3,338, coming fifth out of ten, while former contestant Marlain Angelidou, who represented Cyprus in 1999, came seventh with 2,526 votes.

The winning song was composed by the singer’s brother Nicolas Metaxas who raised his profile considerably when he came second in Greece’s version of the television show ‘X-Factor’.

After all the entries were heard, his teenage sister, Christina succeeded in getting 12,309 votes, almost twice the votes from the next song, ‘Bleed for U’, by Pieros Kezou, which managed 6,590 votes.

When they announced the results Christina was very emotional and the only thing that she managed to say was “thank you”.

Apart from flying to Moscow to represent Cyprus in the 54th Eurovision Song Contest, Christina also plans to publish her first book which contains four children’s stories.

Last year, Cyprus failed to make it to the final round. Let’s hope that this year, Christina with her beautiful voice will manage to break into the final.

Meanwhile, Greece is continuing its trend of choosing highly successful artists to represent the country in the popular song contest, with Sakis Rouvas picking up the mantle this year.

The Eurovision Song Contest semi-finals will take place May 12 and 14 in Moscow. Cyprus will participate in the second semi-final. The final contest will follow on May 16.