Mentor Shala: The Eurovision vote is political, I have lobbied for Albania while I was the director of RTK.

Former director of Kosovo Radio Television (RTK), Mentor Shala, has reacted to the voting process at the European Eurovision Song Contest.

In a Facebook post, Shala has declared that “all is policy” at Eurovision, stressing that most members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) come from Eastern and Southeast Europe, including countries like Russia, Georgia and Belarus. According to him, these countries make up the majority of the jury votes and directly influence the final rankings of the race.

“The Albanian has a problem with even after the best league with the win,” writes Shala, suggesting that without literal lobbies in the EBU ranks, successes are difficult.

He has added that the jury's votes are not independent, but depend on lobbies that the general directors of public broadcasters do on their colleagues.

The jury vote is political. I was myself part of the lobbies for the jury vote for my RTSH counterparts while I was in charge of RTK,” he said.

While for the public vote, Shala said she cannot speak with certainty because of lack of information on her monitoring mechanism.

At the end of the post, he also gave advice to the public attending Eurovision:

<x0.Nongone music is fun and don't be nervous who wins.”/Periscope/