VZCZCXRO5117
RR RUEHDBU RUEHLN RUEHPOD RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHMO #4287 2430246
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 310246Z AUG 07
FM AMEMBASSY MOSCOW
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 3456
INFO RUEHXD/MOSCOW POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE
RUEHVK/AMCONSUL VLADIVOSTOK 2383
RUEHYG/AMCONSUL YEKATERINBURG 2673
RUEHLN/AMCONSUL ST PETERSBURG 4454

UNCLAS MOSCOW 004287 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV KDEM SOCI RS
SUBJECT:  The "For A Just Russia" Party Stages Primary 
 
 
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SUMMARY 
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¶1. (SBU) Summary.  For a Just Russia (SR) held a series of public 
primaries throughout Russia on August 26 in preparation for the 
December Duma elections.  Far from being a well-run, effective 
sampling of voter preferences, the primaries seemed to have been 
slapped together in an effort to keep pace with the rival United 
Russia political party and to provide SR with additional publicity 
on the eve of the official kick-off of the election campaign.  End 
summary. 
 
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PREMATURE PRIMARIES 
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¶2. (U) On August 26, the Kremlin-launched party For a Just Russia 
(SR) continued its campaign for the December Duma elections by 
staging national primaries in 53 subjects of the Russian Federation. 
 According to SR Chairman Sergey Mironov, about 383 thousand voters 
had ultimately cast their votes either by internet or at one of the 
683 polling stations open around the country. To date, only 
twenty-six of the regions have posted results. 
 
¶3. (SBU) Embassy efforts to determine the locations of the primaries 
in Moscow were unsuccessful.  Newspaper reports indicated that 
journalists had similar difficulties.  (The national daily 
Kommersant reported that of the eighteen planned polling places in 
Voronezh, only three seemed to be open on primary day.)  Press 
reports suggested little voter interest in the primaries, and only 
half-hearted attempts by SR activists to induce passers-by to 
participate. 
 
¶4. (SBU) Inna Nelyuba, the SR Moscow organization's director of the 
Moscow primaries told us -two days before the primary date-- that 
she did not have all the necessary permits and could not say where 
the contests would be held.  Information about the location of 
polling places was also not available on the internet. 
 
¶5. (SBU) Nelyuba said that the SR primaries were open to all Russian 
citizens who were eligible to vote.  A description of each of the 
candidates and his/her biography would be available at the relevant 
polling place and write-ins were allowed. 
 
¶6. (U) The Moscow SR branch had arranged for voters to cast their 
ballots via internet.  Although the list of candidates was available 
on August 24, by August 27 a mere sixty-five internet votes had been 
cast.  Sergey Loktinonov, a party worker and the president of the 
Russian parachutists organization in Moscow, was in first place 
among internet voters, with thirty-three percent of the vote, while 
incumbent Duma deputies were each garnering barely five percent. 
(In the end, Duma Deputy Aleksandr Lebedev won the Moscow race with 
39.5 percent of the vote.  Duma Deputy Oksana Dmitrieva won the St. 
Petersburg contest, with 50.5 percent of the 12 thousand, five 
hundred votes cast.) 
 
¶7. (SBU) SR Press Secretary Aleksandr Morozov told us that the 
primaries were one in a series of assessments that SR was conducting 
in the process of refining its final party lists.  According to 
Morozov, SR had already done four voter surveys and would commission 
a fifth before the national party conference.  The surveys and the 
primary results would be used by the party leadership in crafting 
SR's final lists, which would be confirmed at the party conference, 
to be held either September 16 or 23. 
 
¶8. (SBU) Per Morozov, the regional lists used in the primaries 
featured only local candidates.  Excluded were SR heavy hitters, 
whose places on the list would be decided only at the September 
party conference. 
 
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COMMENT 
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¶9. (SBU) The primaries appeared less an attempt to gauge the 
electorate's preferences for lists that are, in any event, nearly 
finalized, than an effort by SR to generate publicity before the 
beginning of the official campaign in September.  The haste with 
which the August 27 contest was cobbled together (it was announced 
by Chairman Sergey Mironov on only August 17) suggested that the 
primaries were part of an effort to remain at parity with the United 
Russia party, which has been engaged in primaries of its own. 
BURNS