"JUST RUSSIA" STRUGGLES

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 MOSCOW 005506

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/23/2017
TAGS: PGOV KDEM PINR SOCI RS
SUBJECT: "JUST RUSSIA" STRUGGLES

REF: A. MOSCOW 5410

B. MOSCOW 5355

Classified By: POL M/C Alice G. Wells. Reason: 1.4 (d).


1. (C) Summary: With elections just over one week away, the
Kremlin-fostered party Just Russia (SR) seems increasingly
unlikely to cross the seven-percent threshold to Duma
representation, and the media have begun their death watch.
Observers peg SR's problems to Putin's decision to head the
United Russia list, SR Chairman Mironov's sub-par
organizational skills, and the near-theological challenge for
SR of loving Putin but hating the United Russia party he
represents. It remains possible that the Kremlin may nudge
SR, which by most counts is polling at about five percent,
into the Duma. If it does not, then its more opportunistic
members may head for greener pastures while the rest resume
life in the three parties from which SR was formed about one
year ago. End summary.

Great Expectations
--------------


2. (SBU) Recent polls show the Just Russia (SR) party at
about five percent of the vote with just over one week
remaining until the December 2 Duma elections. SR has failed
to meet the high expectations sketched for it when it was
created in October 2006. At that time, it was touted as a
Kremlin project, and there was much talk of it being the
second in what would eventually become a managed, two-party
system. SR was reportedly groomed as the left-wing
alternative to the Kremlin's United Russia (YR),and it was
speculated that it would be a haven for those in the regional
elite who had not succeeded in finding a home in YR.


3. (SBU) SR's debut in the March 2007 regional elections
seemed to put the party solidly on the political map. It
finished first in Stavropol, second in four other of the
fourteen regions, and polled an average of 15 percent across
all of the races. Experts expected that SR would continue to
consolidate its gains, especially since the March contests
had shown wary regional leaders and businessmen that the
Kremlin was prepared to tolerate two ruling parties. In
Lipetsk, Putin had even allowed the party to use his image as
part of its election campaign.

The Downward Slope
--------------


4. (C) According to International Institute of Political
Expertise General Director Yevgeniy Minchenko, however, the
March regionals were the beginning of the end for SR.
Analysis of the party's victory in Stavropol showed that SR's
votes had come at the expense of United Russia, when the
intended vote donor was to have been the Communist Party. The
prospect of two Kremlin projects fighting for the same vote
pool cooled official enthusiasm for SR, Minchenko thought,
and it was at that point that the wind began to go out of the
party's sails.


5. (C) Contributing to SR's decline, according to Minchenko,
was the confusion created in the regions by the presence of
two official parties. Local authorities are "unable to
handle difficult scenarios," Minchenko said, and providing
administrative support for two contending parties was beyond
the ken of those used to "supporting one, squashing the
rest." There was much turmoil in the regions as elites
affiliated themselves with one or another of the parties,
then attempted to eliminate their newfound opponent, instead
of letting it co-exist.

Bad Management, Bad Luck
--------------


6. (C) Party Chairman Sergey Mironov's sub-par organizational
skills and lackluster personality did little to aid SR's
fortunes. Mironov allowed inter-elite conflicts in the
regions to fester, and he seemed to spend more time in the
months following the March regional elections stumping for
Putin than campaigning for his own party. Minchenko accused
Mironov of having assembled a "weak, corrupt" team for the
December 2 elections, and of failing to identify his
electorate.


7. (SBU) SR's flagging fortunes sank further on October 1,
when Putin announced that he would lead rival YR's party list
into the December 2 Duma elections. In the stampede to
United Russia that followed, SR was swept to the sidelines.
Mironov faced party defections, harassment of SR in the
regions as local leaders struggled to demonstrate their
loyalty to the President, and what amounted to a political
mind-body problem as he attempted to explain how he could

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remain loyal to Putin but in mortal combat with the
President's political party.


8. (C) In spite of all that bad news, a weary SR St.
Petersburg list candidate Oksana Dmitrieva on November 19
summed up SR's December 2 prospects as "good." Dmitrieva
arrived at her optimism by ignoring recent polling, which she
described as "designed to discourage SR voters from voting."
(VTsIOM reported on November 21 that SR could expect to win
4.9 percent of the vote. In its November 16 poll, Levada
predicted that SR would garner four percent of the vote, one
percentage point lower than the five percent than in Levada's
last sampling. The electoral law prohibits publication of
polls during the five days preceding the elections.)


9. (C) Dmitrieva, who had been a party for the Development of
Entrepreneurship individual-mandate Duma Deputy until
switching to SR in July, reluctantly admitted that Mironov
has provided uninspired leadership. She noted that after
being skewered by SPS's Boris Nemtsov during a disastrous
November 7 debate debut (ref a),SR's Executive Committee had
decided to have Dmitrieva debate instead. Dmitrieva also laid
many party list mistakes at the feet of Mironov's campaign
brain trust. "Those who could have created a real party,"
were not given a chance to participate, she lamented. Some
that were included on SR party lists --Dmitrieva mentioned
former LDPR member Aleksey Mitrofanov, oligarch Aleksandr
Lebedev, and youth leader Sergey Shargunov-- should not have
been. Lebedev's efforts to take on YR's Moscow Mayor Luzhkov
had been stillborn, and it had been a "wise decision" to
remove him from the head of the Moscow party list. More
disastrous still had been the decision to have Shargunov in
the federal troika. His departure, after it was revealed that
he had criticized Putin, had created turmoil in the party.

Pressure in St. Petersburg
--------------


10. (C) Putin's decision to head the United Russia list had
dimmed SR's prospects in Dmitrieva's St. Petersburg, where SR
had gotten 21.90 percent of the votes in the March regional
election. Minchenko noted that the fact that St. Petersburg
was Putin's hometown had placed additional pressure on the
local administration to produce a convincing tally for United
Russia. Adding to the pressure was Governor Valentina
Matvienko's November 9 decision to join United Russia's St.
Petersburg list. "I had assumed I would be competing only
against (United Russia Chairman) Gryzlov, Dmitrieva said.


11. (C) Coinciding with Matvienko's entry into the race had
been the deployment of administrative resources against SR.
Dmitrieva ticked off the following tactics that her party in
St. Petersburg had endured to date:

-- on the night of November 1 - 2, the Petersburg Transport
Company refused to allow SR campaign ads to be affixed to the
sides of buses in one bus park, while having those already
affixed removed from buses in a second bus park;

-- Dmitrieva showed pictures of informational posters
displayed in military units that, in violation of electoral
law, call on the soldiers to vote for United Russia;

-- distribution of anonymous leaflets alleging that SR had
somehow provoked price increases in order to gain an
advantage in the election campaign;

-- state employees are being forced to register for absentee
ballots that will allow them to cast their votes at
specially-organized polling places that are under the thumb
of the authorities;

-- state employees are being ordered to use their cellphones
to photograph their ballots, in order to demonstrate that
they voted for YR;

-- there is widespread intimidation of entrepreneurs who have
been supporting SR.


12. (C) Dmitrieva also highlighted difficulties in
advertising on the streets of St. Petersburg. The local
election commission had been vigilant, she alleged, in
enforcing the law, which prevents the affixing of campaign
materials to private property. The commission's rigid
interpretation of the law forced SR to buy expensive
billboard space or engage in inventive but less effective
practices, like posting "strip" posters on drainpipes, which
were not considered private property.

The Future of the Party
--------------


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13. (C) Minchenko noted that SR's treatment at the hands of
the Petersburg administration was consistent with what he
said was a Kremlin directive freeing local administrations to
"do as they pleased" with SR. Dmitrieva reported that SR in
Irkutsk where her husband Ivan Grachev was running, had
encountered little resistance from the authorities. An
earlier attempt by Grachev to get on the list in Tatarstan
had been stymied by "local SR clans" who had candidates of
their own that they wanted on the list. SR's Penza list
leader Aleksey Mitrofanov told us separately (ref b) that the
party was encountering fierce resistance in that region. SR
had taken hits in other regions as well. The Stavropol
region's Duma Chairman Andrey Utkin left the party during the
campaign, and it is expected that SR's Stavropol Duma faction
will cease to exist. SR will not participate in the
Kamchatka regional elections, because more than half of its
list members have resigned.


14. (SBU) In their pre-election post-mortems, political
scientists Dmitriy Orlov (who is linked to United Russia) and
Aleksey Chadaev (who is in the Public Chamber) forecast that
SR would not be represented in the next Duma. Orlov
predicted that SR would join the Agrarians, Yabloko, and SPS
in the purgatory of parties which receive more than three
percent of the vote and exist on the fringes of political
life. Chadaev guessed that such an outcome would mean the
end of SR, because the continued existence of the unlikely
coalition of the Party of Life, Rodina, and the Pensioners
Party from which SR was formed had been premised on electoral
success. Orlov agreed, noting that, unlike the Agrarian
Party, SR does not have the industry lobbyists, trade unions,
and connections with other social/economic structures that
would allow it to survive defeat.


15. (C) Sounding a contrarian note, Kremlin hack and United
Russia candidate Sergey Markov told us that SR still had a
chance at political survival and speculated that Putin would
"make some gesture" that would push Mironov's party over the
threshold. Markov added that Just Russia was a good idea but
politically premature: Russia needed stability more than a
strong two-party system. Markov takes issue with polling
data that posits a two-party Duma, betting instead on a minor
presence by both Just Russia and Zhirinovskiy's LDPR.

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


15. (C) Polling margins of error and Mironov's slavish
loyalty to Putin (Mironov November 14 announced that he would
happily cede his day job, as Speaker of the Federation
Council, to the President) could yet combine to bring Just
Russia into the Duma on December 2. In what is perhaps a
sign that the party may live to see another day, the
Kremlin-linked public opinion research firm Foundation of
Public Opinion predicted November 22, as a result of a survey
conducted November 17 - 18, that SR could win seven percent
of the vote. Whatever the result, SR's performance on
December 2 will not be what the party's founders envisioned a
year ago, and will be well below its tallies in the March
regional elections.
BURNS