Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
07MOSCOW5410
2007-11-16 10:48:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Moscow
Cable title:  

MEDIA AND THE ELECTIONS: THE DEBATES AND THE ADS

Tags:  PGOV KDEM PINR SOCI RS 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXRO8179
PP RUEHDBU
DE RUEHMO #5410/01 3201048
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 161048Z NOV 07
FM AMEMBASSY MOSCOW
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 5283
INFO RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE
RUEHXD/MOSCOW POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 MOSCOW 005410 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/16/2017
TAGS: PGOV KDEM PINR SOCI RS
SUBJECT: MEDIA AND THE ELECTIONS: THE DEBATES AND THE ADS


Classified By: Ambassador William J. Burns. Reason: 1.4 (d).

Summary
-------

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 MOSCOW 005410

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/16/2017
TAGS: PGOV KDEM PINR SOCI RS
SUBJECT: MEDIA AND THE ELECTIONS: THE DEBATES AND THE ADS


Classified By: Ambassador William J. Burns. Reason: 1.4 (d).

Summary
--------------


1. (C) The fifteen days of debates that precede the December
2 Duma elections kicked off on November 6 and will wrap on
November 30. On most days, a shifting mix of political
parties participate in three debates that are broadcast on
three separate channels. President Putin's United Russia (YR)
party has opted out of the process, depriving the other,
struggling parties of the chance to boost ratings by sparring
directly with the party of power. The absence of YR, the
viewer-hostile broadcast times, and a popular lack of
interest in an election drama whose ending is already a
foregone conclusion have kept viewers away from their sets.
Still, the debates, and the ads that accompany them, have
been more interesting than expected, especially since the
Union of Right Forces (SPS) decided it had nothing to lose by
using the live broadcasts to launch an unprecedented
electronic media attack on Putin (septel). End summary.

Format
--------------


2. (U) The series of debates that precede the December 2 Duma
elections began November 6 and will end November 30.
Government-owned television stations "First Channel," "RTR,"
and "TV Center" have, in accordance with the law, provided
qualifying parties with the legally-mandated amount of free
airtime. "RTR" and TV Center" have broadcast live,
uncensored debates, while "First Channel" has pre-recorded
its telecasts. The debates have generally taken place three
times per day: at 7:05 a.m., 5:45 p.m., and 11:05 p.m. Each
session lasts about forty minutes, and features two - four
parties represented by one or two of their representatives.
The debates are moderated by an anchor from the respective
station. The formats vary slightly, but generally allow each
party representative to make an opening statement, take
questions from the moderator and opposing party
representatives, and finish with a closing statement. Some
of the formats have themes: foreign policy or national
defense/security, but the debaters in practice frequently

stray far from the ostensible subject. The parties'
advertisements are shown free-of-charge during the commercial
breaks and at the end of each debate. (Parties can buy
additional airtime, but it is prohibitively expensive for the
bulk of the eleven parties participating in the campaign.)

Flavor of The Debates
--------------


3. (C) The decision of Putin's United Russia (YR) party to
sit out the debates caused commentators to predict that they
would be a listless prelude to an election that was already a
foregone conclusion. A number of the debates have, in fact,
been perfunctory, but that has been more the product of the
personalities participating, then the absence of YR. Most
have been surprisingly lively. The November 7 early evening
RTR broadcast, for example, marked the debate debut of Union
of Right Forces (SPS) Federal troika number two Boris
Nemtsov. Nemtsov, according to media reports, won the
agreement of his Communist Party (KPRF) colleagues to focus
their fire on the absent YR instead of each other. As
Nemtsov told KPRF representative Svetlana Savitskaya "the
debates are designed to have us sling mud at each other while
(YR) remains pure as the driven snow." Just Russia (SR)
participant, Chairman Sergey Mironov, was left to criticize
YR while protecting Putin, whom his party supports. Nemtsov,
in an attempt to call Mironov's bluff, asked how he managed
to "love" Putin while hating YR. Mironov's reply: that he
loves only women; Putin gets his respect, has been added to
the catalogue of Mironovisms that the campaign has produced.


4. (SBU) SPS Chairman Nikita Belykh continued Nemtsov's line
on November 11, terming the "Putin Plan" that forms the core
of YR's platform a "dead end." Not as able a debater as
Nemtsov and not as charismatic, Belykh was frequently on the
defensive. The most frequent charges made by his KPRF and
Democratic Party of Russia opponents were that SPS's populist
campaign themes and sudden radicalization (septel) were a
betrayal of the party's electorate.


5. (SBU) On November 13, Nemtsov, the LDPR's Vladimir
Zhirinovskiy, and Patriots of Russia Chairman Gennadiy
Semigin turned their attention to defense and national
security. Nemtsov again set the tone by terming corruption,
not the United States, China, or the European Union, the
chief threat to Russia's national security. He alleged that
massive Ministry of Defense spending had produced little new
military hardware ("only three airplanes"),little
improvement in military housing, and an experiment "sabotaged

MOSCOW 00005410 002 OF 003


by our generals" to form a professional military. Nemtsov's
line was enthusiastically adopted by Zhirinovskiy, until
Nemtsov reminded the LDPR Chairman that, as a Duma Deputy, he
had voted for many of the programs that had produced such
poor results.


6. (SBU) Sparks flew again on the evening of November 14,
when Zhirinovskiy, SR candidate Oksana Dmitrieva, Civic
Forces's Mikhail Barshevskiy and their seconds dueled.
Zhirinovskiy, who had been comparatively subdued in his
earlier appearances, was his trademark outrageous self. Much
of his fire was saved for Dmitrieva who, in Zhirinovskiy's
telling, had moved to SR in order to preserve her Duma
privileges. Barshevskiy agreed that SR was a "mixed salad,"
whose members were united only by their interest in a seat in
the Duma. Zhirinovskiy refused to let the other candidates
speak, a tactic that prompted Barshevskiy's second to tell
the LDPR leader, "you're intelligent; why do you talk such
nonsense everytime you're in front of a camera?"

The Commentators
--------------


7. (SBU) The comparatively lively debate has won few fans
among commentators, who appear to have concluded with YR's
refusal to participate that the forum was unworthy of
attention. The national daily Vedomosti in a November 8
editorial suggested that a debate about ideas would make
sense if YR were not guaranteed a crushing victory on
December 2. The national daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta complained
that the limited air time allotted made it impossible for a
serious discussion on any issue to evolve. Zhirinovskiy
himself argued in the press that parties represented in the
Duma should have been separated from those that "no one has
heard of." Asked about the debates during a November 13
meeting, Mercator President Dmitriy Oreshkin wordlessly
pushed across the table a copy of an article on the subject
he had written for the weekly magazine Ogonek. The article
complained about the same, old faces --Nemtsov, Yavlinskiy,
Zyuganov, Zhirinovskiy, Savitskaya-- noting that the only new
development was the ten kilograms Yabloko's Sergey Mitrokhin
has gained since the last election. The absence of YR,
Oreshkin observed, meant there could be no winners, only
losers.

The Voters
--------------


8. (SBU) The commentators' boredom seems to be shared by the
voters, who have stayed away from the debates in droves. TNS
Gallup Media reported that only 16 - 20 percent of viewers
watching television at times when the debates were broadcast
had bothered to tune in: about 1.5 percent of the total
Russian television audience. Half of the audience watching
the news program "Good Morning" at 7:00 a.m. flee when the
debate begins at 7:05. The audience share in Moscow, where
interest in politics is traditionally higher, has also been
quite low: the RTR debates have been watched to date by an
average 9 - 10 percent of the capital's viewers.


9. (SBU) Apathy is in part traceable to the viewer-unfriendly
broadcast times of the debates; in 2003 they were prime time
material (6:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.). But the more likely source
of voter indifference is, as the President of the National
Association of Television and Radio Broadcasters Eduard
Sagalaev has noted, "the complete lack of suspense" in the
campaign.

The Ads
--------------


10. (SBU) The political ads have been no less interesting
than the debates. They reflect both the ideological
convictions and the financial resources of their sponsoring
parties. As one would expect, YR has produced a steady series
of slick confections; ads that alternate testimonies to the
wisdom of Vladimir Putin by teachers, steel workers, farmers,
and pop stars like Alla Pugacheva with images of a mock
ballot that has a check in the box that reads "for Putin." A
second such YR ad shuffles images of Russia's military,
industrial, and natural resource might with images of the
President.


11. (SBU) SR's ads feature the distinctly untelegenic party
chairman Sergey Mironov, note that SR is composed of three
parties which united in order to create a just society, crow
about the party's 500 thousand members and 32 Duma deputies,
profile actresses (Rima Markova) and sports heroes (Yevgeniy
Plyushchenko) on the SR list, before briefly describing SR's
goal as "socialism in the 21st century," higher pay and
pensions, and a progressive income tax.


MOSCOW 00005410 003 OF 003



12. (SBU) LDPR's ads concentrate, always, on Zhirinovskiy.
The most recent offering shows at great length a tape of
Zhirinovskiy in 1991 speaking before a seemingly stupefied
Boris Yeltsin. Earlier editions also highlight
Zhirinovskiy's oratorical skills.


13. (SBU) Yabloko's attempts to trump the Zhirinovskiy joker
with a Yavlinskiy ace seem stale. They feature a weary
looking Yavlinsky offering prescriptions for the problems
that ail Russia. Bureaucrats? They shouldn't be allowed to
dabble in business. Affordable medicine? It should be
financed by the budget. The military? End hazing and form a
professional military. At the end of the most recent ad,
Yavlinskiy, noting that Yabloko is the last party --number
11-- listed on the federal ballot, hopefully quotes the Bible
that the "last of you shall be first."


14. (SBU) The Democratic Party of Russia shows Chairman
Andrey Bogdanov as the country's leader in year 2020. Russia
is an EU member, Russians are living in first class housing,
the oligarchs have been jailed by the European Court, St.
Petersburg is an EU cultural capital, and the Russian soccer
team has trounced England to win the World Cup. This future,
the ad implies, could be yours if you vote for the Democratic
Party on December 2, 2007.


15. (SBU) The Party of Social Justice, has produced a
low-cost black-and-white cartoon that shows a diamond-ringed,
fur-coated young oligarch slipping on a watermelon rind as he
exits his limo for a nightclub. "Are you okay?" asks a
poorly-dressed passer-by. "Yes," says the oligarch. "You
won't be," comes the reply.


16. (SBU) SPS has by far the most interesting ads, however,
and they have increased in their lethality as the debates
have progressed. The most recent version features Chairman
Nikita Belykh asking viewers, as a Soviet documentary film is
screened in the background, if they want a "return to the
USSR on December 2." Belykh holds out the prospect of closed
borders, no international travel, and property confiscation.
He calls the current leadership "dictators," and SPS a "party
of civic resistance." The price of oil has doubled in the
last eight years, Belykh says. Has your life improved that
much? Belykh promises that if SPS comes to power, it will
not leave the current Kremlin residents in peace and asks,
"What do you want, SPS or KPSS (Communist Party of the Soviet
Union)?"

SPS Rhetoric
--------------


17. (C) SPS's direct attack ads and more adversarial stance
seem to be forcing the other parties participating in the
debates to re-examine their rhetoric. Also no doubt playing
a role was Putin's own unkind words about United Russia
during his mid-week visit to Krasnoyarsk. The November 14
evening debates had Zhirinovskiy attacking Prime Minister
Zubkov and his government, as well as YR. In the initial
encounters, Zhirinovskiy had confined himself to criticism of
the KPRF and SR. Secondary KPRF figures also seem more
willing to put their toe into the water now that SPS has
proved that Putin, the Kremlin, and YR are not off limits.
It is not clear if this trend will be allowed to continue on
a national television that until the beginning of the debates
had done little but glorify the President and his inner
circle, but it is possible that the small audience and the
finite number of debates remaining may mean carte blanche for
more of the same.

Comment
--------------


18. (C) Whether the debates continue in the same tone or not,
SPS's sallies against Putin reveal one flaw in the
President's succession strategy that some commentators
speculated about when he first announced his intention to
head YR's list. Even though he has no intention of joining
United Russia, and sits in splendid isolation as numbers one,
two, and three of YR's federal troika, Putin will have more
difficulty playing the role of the good tsar surrounded by
bad advisors now that he has entered the rough-and-tumble of
party politics, and that may have real consequences for the
succession itself.
BURNS