Singapore’s Hady Mirza wins first Asian Idol contest

Hady defeated five other Idol winners from India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

The show was hosted by RCTI — Indonesia’s largest TV network.

Voting via text messaging began when it was televised simultaneously to all six participating countries, with an unprecedented millions of viewers.

Hady Mirza, Singapore Idol Season 2 winner, earlier said: "The pressure I think is that it’s going to be shown across six countries. I started off being quite nervous. But then, as we went along, it was fine and I did pretty well. I think I did pretty well and I’m happy with my performance."

To ensure fairness, judges from all the six countries also took part.

Even a voting system to neutralise the numerical supremacy of big countries such as Indonesia and India was instituted.

Votes were not considered valid unless the sender picks two singers.


The voting system may had already ensured the victory for Singapore, Singapore had advertisement over the television every few hours on the importance to pick TWO singers instead of one may be one of the reasons behind the Singapore to get higher VALID Votes. ^_^

I wondered if other countries does the same too? Maybe they do but still Singaporeans are a very careful and precise in their voting hence I consider us to be pretty high in the probability of winning.

If I remember correctly (correct me if I am wrong), the telecast for the Asian Idol in channel 5 is not complete as not many of them have 2 songs each?

Hardy did sung wonderfully that night and had the crowd crazy with his looks, it may be true that looks does help. It's been acknowledge that female fans are more fanatical in voting for idols in such contest and male fans are more "wait and see" attitude.

The voting cost at 60 cents a sms (in Singapore) may also deter many countries from voting more for their idols.

Nevertheless, congratulation to our very own ASIAN IDOL HARDY MIRZA!!!