Statement by EuFoA Secretary General, Michael Kambeck

Our Secretary General, Michael Kambeck, issued the following statement in response to an article published by Nouvelles d’Arménie Magazine in their April issue (No 195) and CivilNet on 10 April:

“Having read the article published by Nouvelles d’Arménie (NdA) Magazine in their April issue (No 195) and republished by CIVILNET on 10 April (translated into Armenian and English), I retain my initial reaction (see below), which I sent by email while being on holiday and which was published on our facebook page on 11 April 2013. In addition, it is noteworthy that we invited NdA to ask us further questions, but they preferred not to communicate with us, and that CIVILNET deleted my entire response passage to NdA in the re-publication for their Armenian readers (see below), publishing only the biased NdA analysis.”

Please click here to read the letter that TNS opinion has published following the NdA publication.

Below, please find the original reply that Michael Kambeck sent after being contacted by Nouvelles d’Arménie Magazine:

“You have contacted me on behalf of an undisclosed journalist, wishing to write about Armenian opinion polls without asking a single question about any poll, listing a number of misleading questions about the from our side inconceivable idea that there may be any organisational or financial link between EuFoA and my former employer Burson-Marsteller, overlooking the publicly available information that Burson-Marsteller has in the past years been working for President Aliyev’s “Baku 2020” bid, and asking why I am hiding information about my CV while that information is available with a google search.

While travelling, Michael Kambeck issued the following interim statement on 11 April in response to an article published by Nouvelles d’Arménie Magazine in their April issue (No 195) and CivilNet on 10 April.

“On holiday with my family, I was told over the phone about an article by Nouvelles d’Arménie Magazine. The parts that were read out to me were highly misleading and apparently politically motivated. Already the questions, sent to us in March revealed an attempt to create a politically suitable story, rather than seeking any truth about the TNS opinion polls which we commissioned. Not a single question was about these polls. In January, EuFoA invited Nouvelles d’Arménie Magazine to Armenia, as part of our party-politically neutral work to invite European media to report about the elections. At that time, we had no information about the new style and political mission of the paper, which, so I’m told, came with a recent change of its chief editor. We are sad about the demise of this traditionally important Armenian voice in Europe. We will react in an appropriate manner after my return, during the course of next week.

Anyone who has ever worked with us on a project saw our party-political neutrality. The TNS polls were absolutely independent, not a single digit was influenced by EuFoA, every step was transparent like in no other poll, and we still invite anyone, who is genuinely interested, to check with TNS and us anything they want. For the first time in Armenia, the public had access to the real data about the political situation in the country before elections, as it should be in a democracy. We are proud of this contribution. Party political activists from all sides have criticised these polls, whenever the data did not suit them – and in the last four polls this was true for each political party at least once. This is part of the political game, but journalists and NGOs should not become instrumentalised in it.”