Izvestia: "The Prime Minister is collecting suggestions for his programme on the Internet"
The election site for presidential candidate Vladimir Putin was launched on January 12. The website talks about Putin's background and his current activities, but there is no election campaign programme yet. Instead there is a "People's Programme." Putin's election campaign programme will be published as soon as it is ready, said Dmitry Peskov, the prime minister's spokesperson.
The main feature of the website is a section entitled "Popular opinion." Under the slogan "Let's change Russia together" visitors to the site are invited to submit their proposals for Putin's campaign programme. The suggestions with the highest ratings will be included in the final document.
Peskov explained to Izvestia that the ratings for people's suggestions will be determined by the number of "likes" they receive. To leave a proposal people have to register on the website, which entails entering personal details like your name and your social status. But anyone can "like" a proposal, you do not have to be registered, Peskov explained.
"Any position in the ratings will guarantee that the topic and the proposal will make it to the presidential candidate. The ones with the highest ratings will be considered for inclusion both in Mr Putin's work and in his programme. All proposals will be published, apart from ones that are nonsensical, go against ethical standards or violate the rules of the site's moderators," Peskov told Izvestia.
The site has a strong visual focus with lots of pictures and infographics. In addition to figures, the site's developers have added into the "Experience" section a link "A simple story of simple people," which tells how Putin has solved problems for specific individuals. The developers did face some difficulties when they were creating the site, since they were not allowed to put up photographs of children, so that the lead story about Dasha Varfolomeyeva, who asked for "a dress like Cinderella's", had to be illustrated with drawings of her family.
Peskov told Izvestia that RIA Novosti had developed the site. The news agency received 1.1 million roubles from Putin's election account to create and maintain the site. No tender was held because the order was placed by the prime minister's campaign team and not the Government House.
"We chose them because they have been involved in a variety of other contracts to create and develop a whole host of websites in many different fields," Peskov explained. "By law we did not have to put the contract out to tender."
The site will remain live until the end of the election and will then be frozen. According to the Domain Name Registration Centre, the putin2012.ru domain has been paid for until August 2012.
Anastasia Novikova
