The Pazardjik band have been docked 1000 votes due to suspicion that some of the vote clicks in their favour were engineered via cheating.

The band has not been disqualified, as it could be some of their fans, not the actual musicians themselves, who have been partaking in this rather uncool activity.

This Monday we activated the special РђCTION section of our website to launch the voting campaign for 'Hottest New Bulgarian Rock Band'!

We then stumbled upon serious rule infringements involving votes for Amber, who hail from Pazardjik, so we're giving them a last caution by taking 1000 votes off their current tally.

"We're not talking about your fans, family and friends of the band voting here - that's normal and it goes on everywhere, fair enough. Nothing wrong with that" - commented Tangra Mega Rock radio boss Vassil Varbanov.

"It's when votes are generated in an unfair manner, by various tricks to go round and bend the rules of the contest! By this we mean tens of votes cast by a single person".

"We're not necessarily stating that the musicians themselves have been stooping so low. That's why we haven't disqualified Amber, but we've given them a caution. It's probably some of the band's fans, who, instead of helping them, have actually given them a kick in the teeth. So this is a warning aimed at them. To do this voting trick on the very first day the competition is launched is, putting it meekly, quite a dumb move. Especially since we have 27 more days of voting to go."

"We're looking for the best and hottest new band out there - this doesn't necessarily mean the band that play their instruments the best, it has a lot more to do with attitude and honesty than anything else. Pulling shitty tricks isn't very rock'n'roll" - added Varbanov.

We've also spotted a number of other minor infrigements on the part of some of the other participants, but we will not be taking any action against them...yet.

relatives of one of the bands are uniting for a stronger voteВ 

"It's a fact that every participating band can take advantage of the voting "opportunities" on the Net, so everyone is on equal ground in that respect. This would turn the whole idea into some sort of chart, determined by the bands themselves, which would defeat the initial objective, that being that this competition is for the radio's LISTENERS to vote for the bands they like best" - says the initiative's IT manager Jonathan Summerfield.

"We've implemented enough restrictions to ensure a one vote per-song each day. We wouldn't want to introduce a username/password scenario, because even that wouldn't hinder cheats" - added Summerfield and went on to give the following example:

"For a number of years there were visa restrictions for Bulgarians in Europe, yet this measure did not prove successful in stopping criminals from travelling. So if we did something similar, it would only prove to be an annoyance to honest participants, whereas cheats would always find ways of getting round it."

"There are no absolute guarantees of fair play as regards voting on the Internet! Any additional formalities would only serve to discourage people's participation in the voting, which would reflect badly on the bands themselves."