| Those who came to Vasilievsky Spusk received news from Singapore late Just a few minutes after the start of the pretentious event organized yesterday afternoon by the capital’s authorities on Vasilievsky Spusk, it became clear that the action to support Moscow as a candidate to host the 2012 Olympics was meaningless. The Russian capital was eliminated from the list of contenders shortly after the start of voting by members of the International Olympic Committee. However, the organizers of the action did not immediately inform those who were recruited to wave flags and balloons at the Kremlin walls on the party, educational, housing or service lines. The work done by the city authorities to gather on a weekday, and at the height of summer, a crowd of 70 thousand “fans” for Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and Vice-Mayor Valery Shantsev who went to Singapore could go to waste within a few minutes . And therefore, the remaining officials at the farm decided to correct the “live” broadcast from Singapore.
When Mr. Luzhkov and his comrades were already preparing to pack their bags in Singapore, voices filled with artificial optimism were still heard in his city. “We believe that the Olympics will take place in Moscow in 2012!” - declared the hosts of the action, which diluted the performances of unknown dancers and pop singers (mostly factory-produced). The repertoire, by the way, was not chosen very well: pessimistic phrases from a rehash of one of the girl groups “and from now on you and I have no way there”, “it will be somewhere, but not here” clearly did not correspond to the general pathos of the event, although they were to the liking of a realistically minded public.
However, the organizers of the action were not going to give up so easily and stubbornly displayed on the screens installed on Vasilyevsky Spusk not those broadcast footage from Singapore, in which IOC functionaries were choosing only between Paris and London, but advertising videos of all candidate cities. It is surprising that song messages to the competing cities were transmitted from Moscow in the very sequence in which they left the list of contenders for the title of Olympic capital: first to New York, then to Madrid.
Due to the desire of the Moscow authorities to demonstrate the patriotic impulse of the Russian capital to their now former and more successful competitors, tens of thousands of people had to act involuntarily in the heat for an hour and a half. Of course, in order to gather 70 thousand people on Red Square at this time of year, the city authorities had to try hard. A win-win option would be to gather on Vasilyevsky Spusk the most convenient crowd for officials in terms of organization - schoolchildren and teachers. However, the holidays, which have already begun in all educational institutions of the country, did not allow them to get by with little bloodshed. Ultimately, we had to send everyone to the concert who, for some reason, was unable to pass the session or go on vacation. Judging by the abundance of United Russia flags, Mr. Luzhkov used party resources. There is no need to talk about city enterprises. Yesterday in the first half of the day it was almost impossible to resolve your everyday issues in a number of the capital's housing offices. Most of the technical service phones simply did not answer, and in one of the city unitary enterprises a Vremya Novostey correspondent was honestly told: “Call after 5 p.m., everyone has left for the Olympics.” The ranks of fans were strengthened by 3.5 thousand police officers, 1.3 thousand military personnel and 140 riot policemen sent to maintain order in the center of Moscow.
To be fair, we note that the speech of IOC President Jacques Rogge was broadcast without delay. “The capital of the 2012 Olympics will be the city of London,” he said, but the action at the Kremlin walls did not end there. The audience had to listen first to the promise conveyed on behalf of Yuri Luzhkov to build all the Olympic facilities, despite the defeat, and then to several more pop groups led by the noted patriot of Moscow Oleg Gazmanov, shouting something about the conscience of the International Olympic Committee. The pop stars were not left without listeners, perhaps also because it was practically very difficult to get out of the square. To get to the metro, it was necessary to pass through metal detectors that had not yet been dismantled and police cordons that had not been removed, through which Muscovites were allowed to enter Vasilyevsky Spusk two hours earlier.
Restrictions on automobile movement in the city center, which were introduced by the city authorities on a weekday, were lifted only in the evening, when traffic jams traditional for rush hour began to form in Moscow. Anna ShPAK |
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