TWIC is 30. First issue 17th September 1994.
FIDE Presidential Elections (Russian Candidate)
Russian Endorsement for Ilyumzhinov virtually ends Karpov Chances
Mark Crowther - Wednesday 21st April 2010
Kirsan at the Opening Ceremony of the World Chess Championships. Photo © ChessDom | http://www.chessdom.com
Anatoly Karpov had hoped to stand for the FIDE Presidency and win against the incumbent Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. The nomination of Ilyumzhinov by the Russian Chess Federation, not least because they judge the level of support for his re-election very high, is virtually the end for Karpov's chances this time. But even the Russians have their severe reservations.
However from a good source since I published most of what I say below it looks like Karpov is preparing to fight back. I understand Karpov's camp look set to claim that Arkady Dvorkovich is attempting to circumvent the proper process in favour of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. Karpov believed that the nomination would be decided in mid-May and that Dvorkovich doesn't have the authority to do make the announcement now. This reflects the terminal nature of not getting the Russian nomination to Karpov's chances. Not a word of it in the Russian press so far but I understand the fight is on but it may still turn out to be a futile one on Karpov's part.
Karpov has indeed launched a counter-attack on the official campaign website: http://www.karpov2010.org/.
Arkady Dvorkovich has claimed the Russian Chess Federation endorsed sitting FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov as a Candidate for the upcoming FIDE Presidential elections in a meeting on Tuesday 21st April 2010. Russia might normally be expected to automatically to endorse their own sitting candidate but they were faced with a choice with the additional candidacy of former World Chess Champion Anatoly Karpov. Now they have made their choice, for Ilyumzhinov, making it virtually impossible for Karpov to win.
An article (http://news.sport-express.ru/2010-04-21/357266/) in Russian (which in spite of me having to google translate is pretty clear in its bluntness) by Yuri Vasilyev (who knows both his FIDE and Russian Chess Politics extremely well) there are a number of really fascinating observations on which I base most of this article.
The President of the Russian Chess Federation (RCF) Arkady Dvorkovich said the Board of Trustees had decided to "strongly support" Ilyumzhinov in the elections which are to be held alongside the 39th Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk (September 19th - October 4th 2010). Dvorkovich says that he hopes to meet with Karpov and hoped that the decision would not lead to Karpov ending co-operation with the RCF. Indeed he hoped that Karpov would take up a more prominent position within the Federation, currently he heads up "Chess in Schools".
FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov at the Opening Ceremony of the World Chess Championships in Sofia.
Dvorkovich expressed the view that Karpov had the right to be nominated by other Federations even though to my eyes it requires a fairly cockeyed reading of the regulations to do so. Karpov seemed to acknowledge that he needed the Russian Federation when he first announced his intentions to stand.
There was a lengthy ChessVibes Report in favour of Karpov and they also give his Platform .
When I read in this article:
"President of the German Chess Federation, Robert von Weizsaecker, stated that Karpov will be nominated as Germany’s candidate. The FIDE statutes allow this, since Karpov has been a member of the German chess club 1930 Hockenheim for sixteen years, and therefore he’s also an official member of the German Federation."
I took that to mean that Karpov already knew he wasn't getting the Russian support.
I still don't see how it squares with this rather blunt regulation:
1.2 Nominations for the Presidential ticket and Continental Presidents must reach the FIDE Secretariat at least three months before the opening of the General Assembly. To be elected, each candidate shall be nominated by his federation. He/She should have been a member of their federation at least one year before the General Assembly.
Karpov is Russian, he is and never has been German. "His Federation" is Russia you can tell by looking at the rating list, the fact that he played for a Bundesliga team a long time ago and thus is a member of a club there seems to be irrelevant and an attempt to circumvent fairly clear regulations. My reading would have been the same for Ilyumzhinov had he lost the Russian nomination (although his back-up position is said to be a nomination by the FIDE Presidential Board and where does it say that you can do that in the regulations?). But interpretations of FIDE regulations have been notoriously flexible in the past.
The olive branch of a more important position within their organisation held out to Karpov by the Russian Chess Federation looks like quite cute politics and if he were to build his influence in chess politics from within the Federation he could a very strong candidate both for himself and the Federation in the future. However if, as has been claimed that Karpov is preparing to fight the Federation over the actual nomination it is unclear what follows. I know I'm not the only person who believes that a real chess player should get another crack at running FIDE. It doesn't get much more real than a former World Champion.
Veselin Topalov and Silvio Danailov with FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. Photo © http://www.europe-echecs.com who are on the spot making videos.
Dvorkovich in his support for Ilyumzhinov said a number of interesting things according to Vasilyev's article.
Firstly he said that they "evaluated" the chances of each candidate by consulting other Federations and they found the majority in support of Ilyumzhinov raising the possibility that if that if they had nominated Karpov, Ilyumzhinov would still have found a way to get on the ballot and win. His point I guess was that Ilyumzhinov is their President and they didn't want to lose that.
Secondly whilst they "appreciate" the work Ilyumzhinov has done they still think "serious changes" need to be made.
These changes include the pork-barrel of moving the FIDE headquarters to Moscow, a "rotation" of the members of the executive of FIDE, "streamlining the world championship cycle" which is currently a "lottery". These changes should be made "prior to the re-election of the Congress of FIDE" and without which the Russians might not actually vote for Ilyumzhinov.
So the Russians seem to be trying to keep Karpov as a threat whilst at the same time trying to get Ilyumzhinov to accede to their wishes. I'm only an outsider looking in at FIDE but it was pretty clear from the last election that the FIDE Delegates (the only voters that count) resent people who they regard as dilettantes who come in from the outside and tell them how to run their show. A position at the Russian Chess Federation, a bit of work for FIDE and a world tour of pressing the flesh may at some future point get Karpov both the nomination and eventually the Presidency, but I don't believe it is going to happen this time. It maybe that Karpov will still stand with a German nomination (especially if he is to break with the Russian Federation) so as to build support for next time, but I still think it is very clear he can't win.
Ilyumzhinov has already outlasted his predecessor by a couple of years Florencio Campomanes (1982-1995 13 years) but effectively has the same support base. So there hasn't been a real change of the guard since 1982 and there is no real sign the votes are there for one now.
Ilyumzhinov is also a great political survivor. He has been President of Kalmykia since April 11, 1993. He is in his fourth term (in spite of regulations that said he could only stand for two) when he was nominated by Vladimir Putin in 1995. There are calls for Ilyumzhinov to end his Presidency in Kalmykia. A recent report http://www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1272879.html compared the announcements he had made with the rather less impressive results seen on the ground. Independent journalists and human rights organizations Kalmykia of the Russian Federation, held a protest rally on April 9th (http://rus.azattyq.org/content/Kirsan_Ilyumzhinov/2011891.html) with the main slogan of the protest - "Kalmykia: 1993-2010 years - 17 years of lies and shame!". Whilst it is clear that Kalmykia is experiencing an economic crisis the article ends by saying "no serious evidence that the Kremlin intends at all costs to remove Kirsan Ilyumzhinov the presidency."
So it seems that Ilyumzhinov survives on all fronts for at least some time.
Sources: http://e3e5.com/ - http://reports.chessdom.com/news-2010/russia-endorses-ilyumzhinov-for-fide - http://news.sport-express.ru/2010-04-21/357266/ - - A Previous TWIC Report
