Kasparov vs Ilyumzhinov: the FIDE Presidency battle begins

[Chris Rice]

FIDE have issued further clarification regarding proxies.

'Please be advised that a Delegate who has given his proxy to another Delegate can still vote a proxy if he has been given one."

Hope that's all clear to everyone.

[MartinCarpenter]

Quite logical if you work through it Can't really work out quite why someone would give their vote to someone else to cast then turn up anyway mind. Seemingly because they'd been given someone else vote to cast but well....

Is there some byzantine manouvering behind it all?

[Michael Farthing]

Perhaps having given someone else his proxy he is not allowed to take that back but subsequently is asked to attend by someone totally different who can no longer go...; It happens all the time!

[Chris Rice]

Nine days later and FIDE have decided to act against the allegations, that the FIDE Electoral Commission have been nobbled. They've attacked Ank Santens on the basis that it was her idea to set up an Electoral Commission in the first place. While this is true it rather misses the point that she was expecting FIDE to have an independent commission. Usual FIDE tactics I guess of attacking the credibility of the person making the claims rather than to listen to what they are actually saying.


'FIDE wishes to correct false and misleading allegations made by Ms Ank Santens, observer to the ELE on behalf of the Kasparov ticket, in her observations published on the website kasparov2014.com on the 19 July 2014.

First, the Electoral Commission was welcomed by Ms Santens as “a good development”. After lengthy discussions during the days preceding the 2012 General Assembly in Istanbul, an agreement was reached with Ms Santens regarding the detailed functioning of the Electoral Commission. For example, she required that members of the ELE constituted for an election be precluded from being elected or appointed to any Presidential Board position in that election and this was accepted by FIDE. Ms Santens herself presented and supported before the General Assembly the changes to the Statutes and the Electoral Regulations, including the creation of an Electoral Commission. These amendments were adopted with an overwhelming majority since there were only 6 votes against and 1 abstention. It is therefore particularly inappropriate for Ms Santens to criticise a system after she has played an active and significant role in its introduction.

Moreover, Ms Santens claims that the Electoral Commission members were not in possession of all relevant documentation. This is plainly wrong as all relevant documents, whether they were sent by Ms Santens herself on behalf of the presidential ticket of Mr Kasparov, member federations, state authorities, NOCs or IOC, have been provided to each of the ELE members and to each observers of the presidential tickets. The ELE members therefore had access to all the documents filed and were fully informed. In addition, it shall be noted that the submissions and documents filed by the presidential ticket of Mr Kasparov were sent directly to all ELE members by Ms Santens. FIDE further notes that, contrary to the other Electoral Commission members, Mr Korobeinik and Ms Santens did not consider it useful to visit FIDE office in order to inspect evidence during the ELE meeting held in Athens on 13-14 July 2014. This was either because they were satisfied with the documentation provided or that they were not interested in viewing the evidence.

Finally, FIDE would like to emphasize that it has every confidence in the Electoral Commission, whose members were elected by the Continents and, in the case of the Chairperson, unanimously by the General Assembly in Tallinn.

FIDE trusts that the Electoral Commission has successfully and effectively accomplished its mission, namely to verify who is entitled to vote at FIDE’s Presidential elections in accordance with the Electoral Regulations, and not with regard to the candidate in favour of whom each Delegate may vote."

[Roger de Coverly]

FIDE trusts that the Electoral Commission has successfully and effectively accomplished its mission, namely to verify who is entitled to vote at FIDE’s Presidential elections in accordance with the Electoral Regulations, and not with regard to the candidate in favour of whom each Delegate may vote."

It seems quite plain that is hasn't. In a better regulated system, the list of Federations and Delegates given to the Olympiad organisers four months before the Olympiad to enable invitations to be issued would be treated as an electoral roll and only allowed to be changed under defined circumstances. This would rule out unilateral changes made by FIDE officials as seems to have been the case for Afghanistan and Gabon. In the case of the Gabon, the supposedly renamed Federation hasn't been capable of organising a team.

[Chris Rice]

Illyumzhinov is now saying that Swaziland will vote for him after Kasparov declared the opposite. In addition Karjackin is now publicly supporting Illyumzhinov citing Kasparov ideas as "ultra-radical" whatever that means. Now Karjackin is not a national federation so perhaps we shouldn't care what he thinks. However, what is interesting are the reasons why he supports Illyumzhinov which Illyumzhinov is sufficiently impressed by to put it on his campaign site:

"Sergey Karjyakin also added that one of Ilyumzhinov’s key advantages over his opponent is his talent as a negotiator and excellent organizing skills:

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is capable of organizing and holding a tournament in practically any country in the world, he really is very efficient. Two recent situations provided a very convincing showcase [of his ability]: the search for the 2014 Champion’s Title Match host city and the attempt by the Norwegian organizers of the Chess Olympiad to exclude nine countries, including the Russian women’s team, from the tournament. What did Ilyumzhinov do? He found a solution in both cases within a very short time. What did Kasparov do in the meantime? [Nothing but] criticize FIDE and Ilyumzhinov. And that is the difference between the incumbent FIDE President and the challenger at this time.”

http://fidefirst.com/?page_id=9

[Matt Mackenzie]

Like most people here I can't stand the incumbent, but its hard not to concede Karjakin has a point - especially wrt Gazza

[Nigel Short]

Just in case anyone hasn't read this http://kasparov2014.com/wp-content/uplo ... tories.pdf

[Chris Rice]

The Papua New Guinea Chess Federation was told by a couple of well placed FIDE people that our case was both 'non-controversial' and 'straight forward' (in that the properly elected Executive would surely be listed). The fact that it wasn't was both a surprise to us, and I suspect even to them. (NB No names unless they identify themselves).

Shaun Press
Secretary, Papua New Guinea Chess Federation

I take it Shaun that you're not overly impressed with the size of the hotel rooms at Tromso?

[shaunpress]

The Papua New Guinea Chess Federation was told by a couple of well placed FIDE people that our case was both 'non-controversial' and 'straight forward' (in that the properly elected Executive would surely be listed). The fact that it wasn't was both a surprise to us, and I suspect even to them. (NB No names unless they identify themselves).

Shaun Press
Secretary, Papua New Guinea Chess Federation

I take it Shaun that you're not overly impressed with the size of the hotel rooms at Tromso?

Chris, assuming you are referring to a post I made in an other Forum, the hotel room in question is the one I am currently in in London! And despite its size it is adequate for one person who needed a kip while traveling from Australia to Tromso. Will find out the quality of accommodation when I arrive in Tromso in around 10 hours.
As for the issues mentioned in my first comment, I am looking forward to discussing what went wrong with the process,with the relevant FIDE officers (phrased with the best management speak I could muster). There is even a suggestion that the PNGCF should be taken out to dinner by FIDE, as this is apparently the tradition after you have been f....

[Chris Rice]

Kasparov now declaring himself omnipresent and if you are in Norway you can now take part in the Kasparov Selfie competition. http://kasparov2014.com/2014/08/02/kasp ... in-tromso/

[Chris Rice]

Interesting Kasparov press conference yesterday which clearly focused on vote-rigging:

The first question at the press conference came from Peter Nicholas, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, who asked: “Do you believe Vladimir Putin is in lead with your opponent for this presidency and do you believe that your political opposition to the Putin government is in some sense the reason for that?”

Kasparov answered: “It is not a secret that every Russian embassy in the world has been mobilized by the incumbent. They have been actively pursuing federations and governments to exercise their influence and to sway the votes. In some countries they have been actively involved in buying votes.”

Wilkinson added: “I can confirm. The Russian tried to put a squeeze on us, so to speak.”

Jøran Aulin-Jansson, the President of the Norwegian Chess Federation, was also present and said that he was approached twice.

Kasparov: “Even the Ukrainian federation was approached!” He ended his response to Mr. Nicholas with: “Ilyumzhinov's FIDE will be fully dependent on the pariah state that unfortunately Putin's Russia has been turned into.”

The bigger part of the press conference was about proxies. A proxy is a vote by a delegate on behalf of another federation, whose delegate cannot attend the General Assembly for whatever reason. At least, that is the original idea.

Kasparov: “There were massive violations of the regulations. But you can also just look at the list of proxies. The incumbent side has 25, we have three. That definitely tells you that they have been very busy collecting proxies. (...) Out of these 25 proxies, I would say at least half of the countries that gave the proxies will be represented. In my view, it will not be morally acceptable to have presidents of federations in the audience, while somebody else will be casting the ballot. (...) In our case, all three proxies were given by countries who are not attending this Congress: South Africa, Hong Kong and Bhutan.”

The Kasparov team suspects that some of the proxies might not have a clear link between the two federations, but they haven't been able to bring this topic to the Electoral Commission.

“We asked the Electoral Committee and the FIDE office, led by Mr Freeman, the executive director, to provide us native documents, I mean the emails that could prove this link,” said Kasparov. “Our requests have been categorically denied, whereas every single request from the opposite side was accepted. That gives you an idea about the impartiality.”

“There were four specific proxies hand-delivered by Mr. Makropoulos. All we wanted to ask them is please provide us an email that will show the link between the link between the delegate and Mr. Makropoulos, especially since in two cases, Laos and the Maldives, the proxy was allegedly issued and delivered on the same day. I don't believe that you can sign a proxy on July 15 and the same day hand deliver it to the office in Greece, unless there is an email. Our request was denied again,” said Kasparov.

The Kasparov team believes that altogether at least 14 votes can be discounted “because they simply do not meet the requirements made by the FIDE rules.”

This last point suggests that if they lose by a small margin, it is likely that the Kasparov team will sue the FIDE leadership at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne.

[Roger de Coverly]

Kasparov answered: "It is not a secret that every Russian embassy in the world has been mobilized by the incumbent".

As reported on the FIDE website for example. Is anything known about the "Sports Scholarships" being offered to all and sundry earlier this year?

[Chris Rice]

"Team Kasparov" is issuing a daily bulletin with games analysed by the great man himself in "Game of the day".

http://kasparov2014.com/wp-content/uplo ... ily_01.pdf

Kasparov also refers to Sudan's surprise win against Ireland on his campaign site:

“Congratulations to the Sudanese team for their big win against Ireland. President Tarig Zaroug is showing great progress. When I bumped into the Irish team after the match they said I wasn’t finding them in their finest moment, and that my many visits to Africa were already paying off! But I cannot take credit! One of the joys of the Olympiad is to follow hopeful teams from all over the world, not just the top boards. Good luck, Sudan!”

[Chris Rice]

Illyumzhinov responds to Kasparov's vote-rigging allegations with a vicious and rambling tirade although I get the sense that he didn't write it himself. Still it's on his campaign site so he has to take responsibility for whatever is on it. http://fidefirst.com/?p=3438