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Medvedev: all proposals of primaries’ participants to be taken into account

The Russian prime minister considers primaries to be a working mechanism, which helps defining people’s preferences

SEVASTOPOL, May 22 /TASS/. All the proposals made by participants in the primaries should be handed over to the apparatus of the United Russia party, which will be taken into account when preparations for a party congress get under way, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said at a meeting with participants in the advance voting in Sevastopol and Crimea.

"You are simply obliged to hand over all of your proposals to our party’s apparatus so that we could analyze them and reflect them in a simplified form in our party program and in our new party document, which we are going to finalize very soon and submit it to approval of the United Russia party congress," Medvedev said.

According to him, all the proposals concerning mothers, health improvement centers and other things should be studied in detail. "This should be done without fail," Medvedev added.

One of the female participants who wanted to ask a question, hesitated to pronounce her surname for a long time. Then she said that her surname was Savchenko. "You have kept it secret for a long time," he joked. "It’s a good surname," he added.

The Russian prime minister considers primaries to be a working mechanism, which helps defining people’s preferences.

"Today is a special day for the United Russia party because it is the first time that we are holding advance voting across the country," Medvedev said in his opening address to the primaries participants. "All this talk about advance voting, which is beautifully called ‘primaries, seemed to be an exotic thing borrowed from abroad just 10 years ago," Medvedev went on to say.

"But now we have become convinced, judging from our own experience, that the mechanism works and that it helps defining the preferences of people, our potential voters," Medvedev explained.

Medvedev compared the US election campaign to a show in which pace-eggers take part.

"They are pace-eggers. We do not believe them. It is a show. It is partly, in fact," Medvedev said. That would not do in Russia," Medvedev said. "Our culture of advance voting should be different - it should be an interesting and concrete conversation about the existing problems and ways of resolving them," the Russian prime minister said.