MEDVEDEV WINS BIG; COMMUNISTS DO BETTER THAN

C O N F I D E N T I A L MOSCOW 000602 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/03/2018 TAGS: PGOV KDEM PINR PREL RS SUBJECT: MEDVEDEV WINS BIG; COMMUNISTS DO BETTER THAN EXPECTED; NGO GOLOS CRIES FOUL Classified By: Ambassador William J. Burns for reasons 1.4 (b,d). ¶1. (C) Summary: With almost 99.5 percent of votes counted, Dmitriy Medvedev, Putin's choice as Russia's next president, has received a landslide 70.23 percent of the vote. His closest competitor was the Communists' Gennadiy Zyuganov with 17.76 percent. Late evening March 2, Medvedev appeared with Putin at a celebratory rock concert at Red Square, then held a short press conference at 0100 local time March 3 at which he acknowledged that he had not yet begun to consider possible personnel changes. Local media seemed as uninterested in the election results (both presidential and the races for several local dumas) as it was in the campaign itself, with the recent violence in Yerevan grabbing the headlines in the March 3 newspapers. The actual transfer of power will occur on May 6 when Putin steps down after more than eight years as Russia's president. ¶2. (SBU) In a midday March 3 press conference PACE delegation head Andreas Gross read a statement on the elections agreed by his twenty-two member delegation. The statement, which was milder than the PACE statement on the December Duma elections, held that the presidential election results "reflected the will of the Russian people," although the elections did not "realize their full democratic potential." Establishment commentators on the eve of the elections and since have described the vote as an endorsement of stability and continuity and, as in the December elections, laid the blame for the lack of an alternative to Medvedev at the feet of the democrats, and the inability of the LDPR and Communists to produce new faces. PACE's relatively mild statement was in contrast to the version of the elections offered by the NGO Golos, which alleged "massive, widespread violations," and said that many of its observers experienced difficulties in gaining access to polling places. End summary. CEC Chairman Announces Results -------------- ¶3. (SBU) Central Elections Commission (CEC) Chairman Vladimir Churov announced at 1000 Moscow time that, with 99.5 percent of votes tallied, Medvedev had received 70.23 percent of the vote compared with Zyuganov's 17.76 percent, Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) candidate Vladimir Zhirinovskiy with 9.37 percent, and Democratic Party head �A;Andrey Bogdanov with 1.29 percent. Turnout was estimated to be 69.65 percent nationwide with some areas (Krasnodar, Tambov and St. Petersburg) recording significant increased turnouts compared to the 2004 presidential elections. Medvedev's resounding victory -- although he did not match Putin's 71.37 percent showing in the 2004 presidential elections, he did receive over two million more votes than Putin -- gives him a popular mandate, albeit one closely tied to Putin. The national media quickly started to refer to the two as a ruling "tandem." ¶4. (SBU) The 17.76 percent showing by the Communists, who are the most likely to contest the outcome (they have already filed 160 complaints with the CEC),is better than expected, perhaps reflecting a small "protest" vote in addition to the votes of party stalwarts. Zyuganov did best in Novosibirsk, Orenburg, Nizhniy Novgorod and Smolensk, where he picked up about 25 percent of the vote. Zhirinovskiy fared a little better than his party did in the December 2007 Duma elections, showing that his and LDPR's core group of supporters has not diminished significantly. Bogdanov received slightly less than one million votes -- half the number of signatures he supposedly collected to get on the ballot. ¶5. (SBU) Russian media outlets offered their interpretation of the preliminary results as soon as they were announced at 2100 Moscow time on March 2. State-controlled television offered three strains of reaction. Kremlin-linked pundits Gleb Pavlovskiy, Vyacheslav Nikonov, and Ekspert editor Valeriy Fadeyev called the results a vote for the accomplishments of the last eight years under Putin and attributed the large margin of victory to a "failure by the opposition." They traced Zyuganov's better than projected numbers to a more "populist" campaign. Pavlovskiy agreed, adding "those who support Putin came to vote for Medvedev." Another Kremlin-friendly commentator, Dmitriy Orlov, concurred, and saw in the large number of votes a "consolidation in society." Independent editor Konstantin Remchukov and Renaissance Capital's Igor Yurgens hoped that some support had been generated by the prominent place given to "freedom" during Medvedev's pre-election speech in Krasnoyarsk. They spoke of a crisis among the traditional, western-leaning "democrats." Deputy PM Aleksandr Zhukov and United Russia's Andrey Vorobyev similarly saw the vote as one for continued economic progress. Zhukov also referred to the Krasnoyarsk speech, and the difficult task ahead for Medvedev of making Russia one of the five largest economies in the world. ¶6. (SBU) Less state-controlled television featured freewheeling debates with most guests criticizing the lack of freedom of speech on television, the lack of an opposition, and the refusal of Medvedev to debate Zhirinovskiy and Zyuganov. Andrey Kolesnikov, Kommersant's resident Putin watcher, argued that journalism must be in opposition to the powers that be, and stated that he is convinced that little will change with the advent of Medvedev. A number of analysts predicted an unstable power-sharing arrangement and most agreed there will be a "jolt" involved with the upcoming shift in power structures and the introduction of a leader from a new generation. PACE Sees Same Problems As in December -------------- ¶7. (SBU) At a March 3 press conference, PACE delegation head Andreas Gross offered a milder than expected verdict on the election. Gross told journalists that twenty-two members of his delegation had visited one to two hundred of the country 96,000 polling stations and had drafted a consensus statement (faxed to EUR/RUS) that described the elections as "reflecting the will of the electorate," although Russia's "democratic potential had not been tapped." Russians, Gross thought, had voted for stability and continuity in an election that had "most of the flaws of the December Duma elections." Among those flaws, Gross said, were: -- the difficulties individuals had in registering as candidates; -- access for the opposition to the media had not improved; -- the voting had been well administered, but Russia needed "a good election process, not just smooth voting on election day." ¶8. (SBU) Gross also deplored the GOR's refusal to allow long-term ODIHR observers to be present. Gross appreciated the "willingness of the Duma and the CEC to re-assess the electoral legislation" in light of the December and March elections, which emerged from his meeting with ruling party Duma Constitutional Committee Chairman Pligin. He renewed PACE's call for public and independent television in Russia and hoped that in the future the debates "could be made more attractive, so that no candidate would opt out." (Medvedev refused to take part in the presidential election debates.) ¶9. (SBU) In answer to questions from journalists, Gross rejected suggestions that the election outcome had been fixed. He acknowledged that local officials had put pressure on some voters to turn out for the elections, but he also said that "many had resisted that pressure." Gross similarly refused to agree that the election outcome had been "orchestrated" by the Kremlin, a contention that he termed "too simple." "We should not underestimate the ability of Russian citizens to understand and resist attempts to manipulate them," he said. ¶10. (C) In a March 3 conversation, Duma Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Konstantin Kosachev described the PACE statement as "balanced." Golos Cries Foul -------------- ¶11. (SBU) NGO Golos March 3 reported that its 1,500 observers in 35 regions had reported "massive," widespread violations, including a few instances of ballot box stuffing, restrictions on observers, and failure to follow administrative procedures. Executive Director Liliya Shibanova told journalists that 90 percent of Golos's observers were improperly restricted in some manner, while acknowledging most violations were minor. Many polling places, she said, refused to provide observers with certified copies of the vote results, as legally required. In Astrakhan, the regional elections commission denied the 25 GOLOS observers the right to enter polling stations. Golos also reported pressure on government employees and others who worked for large industries to vote for Medvedev. In St. Petersburg, twenty of 110 Golos observers were denied access to the polling places. Two observers were briefly detained. March 3 Demonstrations -------------- ¶12. (SBU) Other Russia persisted with plans to stage an unsanctioned march in Moscow early evening March 3, and an extensive militia presence has blanketed the expected meeting point. The authorities in St. Petersburg have agreed to an alternate route for a simultaneous demonstration to be held in the northern capital's city center. Police and troop presence throughout Moscow's streets was unusually large on March 3, with several pro-Kremlin youth demonstrations and a Communist Party protest rally planned. Local Legislature Elections -------------- ¶13. (U) In regional elections March 2, United Russia's support varied from 49.7 percent in Yaroslavl region to 88.1 percent in Bashkortostan where the Communist Party came in second with just under 6 percent. In the other regions, support for United Russia varied between these two extremes. Just Russia was on the ballot in nine of the ten regions having been excluded in Yaroslavl Oblast. The party did well in Yakutiya and Ivanovo Oblast receiving 14.7 and 10.3 percent respectively, but less well in the remaining seven regions than it did in the December 2 Duma elections. In Kalmykiya and Bashkortostan the party received 5.0 and 3.5 percent of the votes respectively. LDPR's election results also varied from quite poor (1.7 percent in Bashkortostan) to quite good (16.5 percent in Altay Kray). ¶14. (U) Parties other than the four State Duma parties (United Russia, the Communist Party, Just Russia and LDPR) were on the ballots in a handful of regions. In Kalmykiya and Yakutiya, the Agrarian Party produced a relatively strong showing, with 7.6 and 8.4 percent of the votes respectively. The Communists received 4.8 percent of the vote in Yaroslavl region, the only other region in which it ran candidates. The Union of Right Forces was on the ballot in Ivanovo region, but received only three percent of the vote there. Yaroslavl region had the broadest range of parties on the ballot including the Green party, Civic Force, People's Union, and Russian Patriots, although Just Russia was missing. Civic Force was also on the ballot in Sverdlovsk region, where it received four percent of the vote. BURNS