MOSCOW CITY DUMA ELECTIONS: STILL EARLY, BUT

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 MOSCOW 002340 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/10/2019 TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM PINR KDEM KCOR RS SUBJECT: MOSCOW CITY DUMA ELECTIONS: STILL EARLY, BUT ALREADY UNFAIR REF: A. MOSCOW 00951 ¶B. MOSCOW 01743 Classified By: Deputy Chief of Mission Eric Rubin. Reason: 1.4 (b),( d). ¶1. (C) Summary: On October 11 candidates will compete in elections for all 35 seats in the Moscow City Duma. August 26 was the deadline for submitting signatures, and over the following week the electoral committee proceeded to deny registration to 23 candidates of the 141 candidates competing for single mandate seats. Pundits agree that the elections will be neither free nor fair. United Russia will dominate the next Moscow City Duma, winning a minimum 28 seats. GOLOS expert Andrey Buzin estimates that United Russia has the ability to falsify approximately 10-15 percent of total votes cast. End Summary. ¶2. (C) On October 11, candidates will compete for 35 seats in the Moscow City Duma elections. Voters will elect 18 candidates from party lists and 17 in single-mandate districts. July 13 was the deadline for candidates to submit their enrollment documents to the Moscow City Election Commission. August 26 was the deadline for submitting signatures to the Commission, and on September 6 the city announced the registration results. Six political parties are running in the elections: the ruling United Russia party; the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF); the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR); Just Russia; Yabloko, and Patriots of Russia. Andrey Buzin, an expert in election law with the election monitoring NGO Association Voice (GOLOS),told us on August 18 that United Russia will likely win all 17 single-mandate seats and at least 11 of the 18 party list seats in the Moscow City Duma. This leaves seven remaining spots to be divided between KPRF, LDPR, Just Russia, and Yabloko. Buzin doubts that Patriots of Russia will win any seats. Who is Still in the Running -------------- ¶3. (C) According to Moscow City Elections Commission Chairman Valentin Gorbunov's September 8 statement, a total of 371 candidates will compete for 35 seats in the Moscow City Duma. Six parties nominated 290 candidates. 81 candidates were registered in single-mandate districts, down from 141 who declared their intent to run. Out of these single-mandate candidates, 13 self-nominated individuals are registered. The following parties are running for the Moscow 
City Duma elections: -United Russia: On August 4, United Russia announced its top party list "troika" candidates: Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov, Moscow City Duma Chairman Vladimir Platonov, and Deputy Mayor Lyudmila Shvetsova. United Russia will run a slate of 53 candidates for the 18 seats chosen by party list, plus candidates for each of the 17-single mandate seats. Luzhkov, who wields considerable influence and power over the final outcome of elections as a founding member of United Russia, through his and his billionaire wife Yelena Baturina's personal connections, and through his political connections within Moscow, has undisputed control over the Moscow Election Commission. He tops the party list to attract votes, but is under no obligation to leave the Mayor's Office to become the next Moscow City Duma Chairman. The position of Moscow City Mayor is no longer popularly elected, but instead recommended by the City Duma and appointed by the President. -KPRF: KPRF has 46 candidates on the party list and 16 single-mandate candidates, including film director Nikolay Gubenko, KPRF Moscow head Vladimir Ulas, businessman Vadim Kumin, and current Moscow City Duma Deputies Vladimir Lakeyev and Sergey Nikitin. -LDPR: LDPR has prepared a list of 47 candidates for the party list and the 17 single-mandate seats. Vladimir Zhirinovskiy Moscow LDPR branch head Viktor Sobolev, and LDPR State Duma faction staffer Oleg Lavrov will top the LDPR party list. -Just Russia: Just Russia will run a slate of 51 candidates on its party list and 16 candidates for the single-mandate seats. State Duma lower house of parliament deputy Nikolay Levichev and State Duma deputy Galina Khovanskaya top the party list. Just Russia has not previously competed in Moscow City Duma elections, but is fielding a deep list of candidates and appears to have growing support within the city. MOSCOW 00002340 002 OF 004 -Yabloko: Yabloko party chairman and current Moscow City Duma deputy Sergey Mitrokhin and deputy Yabloko chairman and Moscow City Duma deputy Yevgeniy Bunimovich top the 49-person party list. Yabloko will run by party list, but single-mandate campaigns are beyond the party's limited financial means. Former Yabloko leader Grigoriy Yavlinskiy met with President Medvedev July 29 to enlist Kremlin support for Yabloko's participation in the elections. The same day, Medvedev met with Luzhkov. It is speculated that some back room deals might have been made to keep Yabloko, a marginalized opposition party, in the running. -Patriots of Russia: 38 candidates from the party list and one obscure single-mandate candidate, Aleksandr Komissarov, a scientist and General Director of Aero Ecology, will run for the Patriots. Leader of the party Gennadiy Semigin, actor Sergey Mokhovikov, and former State Duma Deputy Sergey Glotov will top the list. Who Has Been Disqualified -------------- ¶4. (C) The Solidarity movement announced July 10 that it would put nine candidates forward to run in single-mandate districts during the Moscow City Duma elections. Their platform was supposed to be based on fighting corruption, illegal construction, and growing utility prices. They hoped to garner extra support from residents' reactions to the economic crisis. Two candidates withdrew, leaving the remaining candidates: former Young Yabloko leader Ilya Yashin, former Deputy Energy Minister Vladimir Milov, Igor Drandin, Ivan Starikov, Nikolay Lyaskin, Roman Dobrokhotov, and Sergey Davidis in the running. However, all seven have since been disqualified. Interfax reported September 8 that Ilya Yashin reportedly did not use the proper subheadings on his signature sheets, as a result of which 100 percent of his signatures were disqualified. Gorbunov maintained that the signature sheets contained signatures from residents of 15 apartment blocks which were torn down five years ago, as well as names of people who died in 2004 and 2005, but Yashin dismissed these allegations as nonsense. Yashin argued that the decision to remove the Solidarity candidates was political since the form he used to collect signatures was identical to the forms submitted by Yabloko and Patriots of Russia. ¶5. (C) Following disqualification, former candidates have become more vocal in their opposition to Luzhkov. In an unprecedented move, Solidarity movement co-chairman Boris Nemtsov released a comprehensive and very controversial report September 8, arguing that Mayor Luzhkov should be sued for corruption in Moscow, blasting the privileged conditions enjoyed by Luzhkov's wife for her dominant construction business in Moscow, and citing the growing disparity between the wealthy and poor in Moscow under Luzhkov's extended leadership. Ekho Moskvy Radio reported September 8 that Nemtsov sent a copy of this report to Medvedev and plans to distribute a million copies of the report to Muscovites. Grani.ru reported September 10, that a group of about 30 Solidarity members presented this report to the investigation committee of the prosecutor general's office for review. ¶6. (C) In July, Right Cause and Yabloko announced plans to run together on a single Yabloko party list. However, an internal rift in the Right Cause party ultimately led to a decision by the Right Cause leadership not to take part in the Moscow City Duma elections and, consequently, it did not put forward a party list. RFE/RL's Russian Service reported September 7 that the leader of Russia's Right Cause Party, Leonid Gozman, called the Moscow City Duma election campaign a "farce." Right Cause party members Boris Nadezhdin, Igor Trunov, and Yelena Guseva decided to run as independent candidates, in cooperation with Yabloko, for single-mandate districts. Trunov, a prominent lawyer, planned to run in Okrug 15 against Moscow City Duma chairman Vladimir Platonov. Moscow Oblast Right Cause leader and former Deputy of the State Duma Boris Nadezhdin told us August 21 that he planned to run in Zelenograd, a part of Moscow City that is geographically unattached to Moscow City proper and surrounded by Moscow Oblast. Nadezhdin hails from the Moscow Oblast and has many supporters there who were prepared to work on his campaign in Zelenograd. He collected the necessary 5,000 signatures and even signed an agreement with Yabloko's Mitrokhin not run against him in Zelenograd. The opposition parties agreed to divide the single-mandate districts so as to consolidate their resources against United Russia by not competing with each other. MOSCOW 00002340 003 OF 004 ¶7. (C) Both Trunov and Nadezhdin were disqualified from the elections. Gazeta.ru reported on September 2 that one hundred percent of the signatures supporting Trunov were deemed invalid because he did not specify his party affiliation or note that he heads up the college of barristers on his signature sheets, which the city electoral commission claimed deceived his supporters. Trunov responded that the leadership of the college was not his official duty. Moderately liberal daily Kommersant reported September 4 that the commission rejected the signatures in support of Nadezhdin since they were in different color ink and that some addresses did not exist. Nadezhdin confirmed these facts with us. Guseva, a part-time Right Cause deputy in the Moscow district legislature, was the only Right Cause candidate, although running as an independent, who managed to get registered by the election committee. Right Cause, though not registered for the elections, has come out with strong statements against Luzhkov since Trunov and Nadezhdin were denied registration. Buzin told us September 7 at a GOLOS press briefing that if the opposition candidates had been allowed to run, they would have boosted the turnout of protest voters and deflated United Russia's popularity rating. State Duma Party Registration -------------- ¶8. (C) The registration process for the Moscow City Duma elections has worked to the benefit of United Russia and to the detriment of the other parties in many ways. The four parties in the State Duma or "parliamentary parties," United Russia, KPRF, LDPR, and Just Russia, enjoy a privileged status in that they are not required to collect signatures to run in the Moscow City Duma elections. For this reason, although LDPR and Just Russia are not represented in the current Moscow City Duma, they are still exempt from collecting signatures. However, Yabloko and Patriots of Russia must adhere to this difficult procedure because they do not have representation at the federal level. Yabloko managed to collect over 70,000 signatures and register the party. Patriots of Russia collected approximately 80,000 signatures to be registered, and each candidate successfully collected 4,000 signatures for the single-mandate seats. Disqualification of Collected Signatures -------------- ¶9. (C) The collection of signatures is an overly burdensome bureaucratic process. Candidates running in the proportional system must collect over 70,000 signatures, whereas single-mandate districts must collect 5,000 signatures, including passport number, DOB, and address of the voter. Each signature sheet must be notarized. Any typo on a signature sheet invalidates all signatures on that sheet. Interfax reported September 5 that the leader of the movement For Human Rights, Lev Ponomarev, stated "the entire opposition is being removed from the election...this all relates to some kind of bureaucratic procedures which have nothing to do with the law." Boris Nadezhdin made clear that getting registered for the election with the government was a much more substantial hurdle than winning the votes needed to take office. It is widely agreed that the government scheduled elections in such a way that signatures could only be collected between July 13 and August 24, when a significant portion of Moscow's population is out of the city on holiday. Press Coverage/Lack of Information -------------- ¶10. (C) Political parties are supposed to have fixed media time limits during their election campaigns. However, almost all state officials and regional heads are members of United Russia and appear prominently on TV, radio, and in newspapers more often than leaders of other political parties and are thereby represented more than the other parties. To date, there has been limited advertisement of upcoming elections around the city of Moscow. Lack of Freedom of Assembly -------------- ¶11. (C) Legally, Muscovites have the right to assembly, but in practice these rights are difficult to realize. Moscow authorities are notorious for dispersing opposition marches and meetings, often with the use of violence. Yabloko's registration required the party to overcome a number of obstacles. According to Yabloko Press Secretary Igor Yakovlev August 5, Yabloko members had been collecting MOSCOW 00002340 004 OF 004 signatures on Red Square and at 80 metro stops in early August and they had problems at five of them. Three people were detained, two of whom filed a lawsuit in response. They were collecting signatures and the militia interfered, confiscating five flags and 13 Yabloko vests. The militia stated that they were violating the law since authorities viewed the flags and vests as an unsanctioned picket. The authorities did not take any signatures, but the militia told the Yabloko members that they had to pay a fine in order to get the flags back. ITAR-TASS reported September 8 that Moscow City Elections Commission Chairman Valentin Gorbunov levied a 100,000-ruble fine on Yabloko for faulty canvassing aids. Comment -------------- ¶12. (C) The registration process in the Moscow City Duma influences the election outcome and clearly favors the ruling United Russia party. Although some opposition parties will make a showing, we fully expect United Russia to dominate the elections. The opposition parties have, for the most part, been sidelined before the elections even take place and the few remaining opposition candidates do not pose a true threat to the Moscow City leadership. The more extreme candidates, such as members of the Solidarity movement, who have been dropped from ballots, are speaking out more vocally. They are bringing their complaints to Medvedev, on the one hand a main United Russia party supporter, yet on the other hand on who has argued for freer elections. A United Russia-dominated Kremlin administration is unlikely to listen attentively to complaints against United Russia in Moscow City Hall. Beyrle