Today, for the first time in Russian history, one president, having served exactly the term prescribed in the Constitution, will transfer power to another.
Photo: Vladimir Milovidov
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Vladimir Putin Will Enter through the Red Porch
// To transfer power to his successor
The scenario for the inauguration of the president elect today will differ from previous ceremonies in only one detail. Unlike first president of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin, who arrived at the ceremony at the same time as the rest of the guests, Vladimir Putin will enter the Kremlin through the Red Porch on Cathedral Square to hand over power to Dmitry Medvedev.
President Elect Dmitry Medvedev spent the last day before the inauguration on the job in meetings. He met with members of board of trustees of Pushkin Museum, held a meeting on housing for World War II veterans, talked with head of the Republic of Mari Leonid Markelov and received the chairman of the Central Elections Commission Vladimir Churov. Churov gave him documentation confirming his election as president. In the evening, Medvedev went home to prepare for the inauguration. Before he left, presidential protocol workers briefed him again about the ceremony and read the inauguration oath to him again.
The ceremony itself, as Chief Herald of the Russian Federation Georgy Vilinbakhov has emphasized, will follow the same scenario as the 200 and 2004 inaugurations of Vladimir Putin. However, as Kommersant learned at the Kremlin, there will be a minor variance. The current president will arrive at the ceremony separately from the invited guests and will enter the Kremlin through the Red Porch on Cathedral Square directly into Andreevsky Hall, where the ceremony will be held. Yeltsin came to the inauguration along with the other officials in 2000. This innovation, they said in the Kremlin, is because Putin is still in office, while Yeltsin had already resigned from the presidency when his successor took office.
Invitations to the inauguration are sent to members of the State Duma, Federation Council and government; department heads in the presidential executive staff; the presidential representatives in the federal districts; religious leaders; public and cultural figures and the leaders of the subjects of the federation.
The governors will come with empty hands. They decided that after acquainting themselves with the event’s protocol, since no presentation of tribute is planned for, unlike at gubernatorial inaugurations. “We can’t give gifts at the inauguration of the president,” Sverdlovsk Region Governor Eduard Rossel said yesterday. “The fact that Sverdlovsk Region grew in all indicators by 11 percent in the first quarter of the current year is a symbolic gift to Dmitry Medvedev. The high-priority national projects are being successfully implemented. More and more housing is being built, salaries are being raised.” The leadership of the Republic of Altai prepared a gift for the newly elected any way, a source in the local government told Kommersant. The source did not specify what it was, saying only that it will be “given in such a way that it will symbolize the spirit and nature of our unique territory.”
The largest delegation at the inauguration will be from St. Petersburg. Besides Governor Valentina Matvienko and presidential representative for the Northwestern Federal District Ilya Klebanov, invitees include speaker of the St. Petersburg parliament Vadim Tyulpanov, Metropolitan Vladimir of St. Petersburg and Ladoga, Putin’s German teacher Vera Gurevich and his judo trainer Anatoly Rakhlin, widow of the commander of the submarine Kursk Irina Lyachina and chairman of the Residents of Blockaded Leningrad organization Irina Skripacheva. From St. Petersburg State University, where both Putin and Medvedev are alumni of the law department, university president Lyudmila Verbitskaya was invited, as were acting rector and dean of the law department Nikolay Kropachev and law professor Yury Tolstoy, Medvedev’s advisor there, who is unable to attend due to health reasons.
The press service of the university told Kommersant that its leaders will present the new president with a small bronze statue of a bear wearing a hat with a copy of the Constitution of the Russian Federation under its arm. Putin received the same statue for his birthday in 2000. The bear was chosen by the farseeing law department as its mascot in the 1990s. A three-meter-high stuffed-toy bear holding a scroll graces that department’s assembly hall. Students in the department have long had a joke that a bear (medved in Russian) brought order to the department and now is doing the same thing in Moscow.
Later in the day, after the ceremony, members of the government and Kremlin staffers will turn in their resignations. Aides and advisors to the president will resign from the Kremlin staff, as will the heads of the presidential departments. They are all officials appointed by the president to terms that match his own. In the case of the cabinet ministers, the heads of the enforcement agencies – director of the domestic intelligence service Mikhail Fradkov, FSB director Nikolay Patushev and the heads of the Federal Protective Service and the courier service – will remain in their posts.
The Political Department
The Inauguration on TV
Dmitry Medvedev’s assumption of office will be widely telecast in Russia. At 11:40, Channel One, Rossiya and TV Center will begin live broadcasts. The ceremony will be broadcast for an hour and hosts Ekaterina Andreeva and Sergey Brilev will provide commentary, as they did four years ago when Vladimir Putin was inaugurated. Besides those three national channels, news channel Vesti 24 will broadcast the ceremony. NTV Plus will broadcast in HDTV. Both state broadcast companies – Channel One and the National State Television and Radio Co. – will show the inauguration on the Internet. Those companies announced yesterday that their websites will also broadcast the ceremony live.
As four years ago, super-modern television technology is being brought in for the inauguration, such as “flying” cameras, which will shoot Kremlin Embankment and the entrance to the Kremlin. Kommersant has learned that most of the television equipment that will be used at the Medvedev inauguration was rented in Belgium and France. Channel One, led by its general director Konstantin Ernst, will coordinate the filming.
Arina Borodina
The Federation Council Cares about the Putin Heritage
Yesterday the Federation Council approved without debate and by an overwhelming majority of votes (one vote opposing) the law “On Historical Heritage Centers for Presidents of the Russian Federation Who Have Finished Their Terms.” The centers will consist of archives, an open library and museums. The former president himself will be the chairman of the trustees. Speaker of the Council and leader of the Just Russia Party Sergey Mironov was the author of the bill. He met with party advisors the day before the vote and received the approval of the majority of committees and commissions in the Council. In particular, the Committees on Constitutional Law, Economic Policy, Enterprise and Property, Science and Education, the Budget, Local Self-Government and even the Committee on the Activities of the Federation Council recommended that the law be passed. The law envisages that the Kremlin administration will set up the heritage center with the cooperation of the former president or his heirs. However, a source close to Mironov said that, although the law speaks of presidents in general, it was written especially for Vladimir Putin.
Alla Barakhova
All the Article in Russian as of May 07, 2008
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