The FIDE election

Garry Kasparov with Anatoly Karpov, Russian Federation supports Ilyumzhinov
Article published in in Svedok weekly, Belgrade, Serbia
(“Svedok“ weekly, Belgrade, Serbia, issue 720, May 11th 2010)
Presented by Chessdom.com

The fact that everything is possible in politics has now been proven in the field of chess too. Two people who had been ’sworn enemies’ for decades, namely ’the Soviet regime’s pet’ Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov, now the leader of opposition to Vladimir Putin, have joined forces to remove Kirsan Ilyumzhinov from the position of the FIDE President.

Simply unbelievable: is it that Karpov and Kasparov were “fake political opponents” before (Karpov siding with let’s say the Serbs and Kasparov with the Croats) while they were, admittedly, charging appropriately for their love and loyalty to ’their’ political party all the time, or is it that the position of the World Chess Federation President (for which Anatoly Karpov is running for President) is so attractive that any kind of coalition is acceptable if it brings with it a position, which in turn brings influence, and with influence comes money…?!

The whole story gains a new flavour with the spicy details that Kasparov, the opponent of the regime in Russia is supporting Karpov, but also that the Russian Chess Federation is against ’their man’ Anatoly?!

So, this year of 2010 is the election year for all the World Chess Federation (FIDE) and the European Chess Union (ECU) bodies. The elections are to be held by the end of September, during the 39th World Chess Olympiad in the west Siberian town of Khanty-Mansiysk (the autonomous county of Yugra). For now, the throne is held (although not that firmly) by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the President of the Republic of Kalmykia of the Russian Federation (FIDE President since 1995) and the Slovenian Boris Kutin (ECU President since 1998). “Svedok“ weekly will be watching the events during the election race with eagle eyes.

The pre-election games started supposedly at the end of 2009, but the real start was in Rijeka in mid March this year. This was when the 12th world champion, the legendary Anatoly Karpov, visited the the 11th European Individual Chess Championship and had two public appearances that were well covered by the media. On these two occasions he announced that he would be running for FIDE President and made direct accusations against the current FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and his closest associates.

It was then that the presidents of the leading West European chess federations – namely the federations of France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland – promised Karpov they would fully support him, and if needed, give an initial recommendation that he be elected the new FIDE President.

However, all eyes were on Moscow, expecting the main signal. The Russian Chess Federation held its general elections on Feb 19th and Mr. Arkady Dvorkovich, who is not that well known in chess circles, but who is very well known as President Medvedev’s right hand, was unanimously elected President of the Russian Chess Federation. Thus, gaining the support of the Russian Chess Federation becomes more important, especially because elections for the FIDE President are to be held in Russia, among other reasons.

We waitied for two months to hear the final decision, and then at a press conference on April 21st Arkady Dvorkovich announced: “The Russian Chess Federation endorses Ilyumzhinov!“ In addition to that, he stated three conditions for the current FIDE President, but we will deal with that topic some other time.

In the few days following this event, Karpov attacked this decision in the media, head-on and with all available weapons, calling it nonexitent and illegal. He gave a lot of interviews, putting emphasis especially on the reasons why he should become FIDE’s first man. This finally brings us to the fact that caused this article to be written in the first place and that ignited curiousity with journalists.

THE “COLOSSAL“ EXPERIENCE IN SERBIA

In the lengthy interview given to the Russian “Echo“ radio station on April 23rd, speaking about his advantages over the other candidate, Karpov said: “I have a colossal experience in organizing big international chess events. They talk rubbish about me playing only individually being a world champion. So far I have organized twelve Children World Chess Olympiads. I organized them myself. I was the president of the Organizing Comitee, as well as the Honorary President, and the idea was mine. I organized the Olympiads in Spain, Malta, Yugoslavia, Serbia, Turkey…”

The words spoken by the chess legend would raise at least a little doubt with the reader who follows chess and who has at least a vague memory of past chess events. That is why we plunged into researching newspaper archives.

The Children Chess Olympiad was first mentioned in this region at the beginning of 1996. Named “The Peace Tournament“, the event which would have attracted a lot of attention in normal circumstances, was organized in an unbeliveably quiet, fast and casual way. The tournament was sponsored by Assembly of the City of Belgrade and “Večernje Novosti“ daily newspaper and it was organized as it was then written as ’the first promotion of the Children World Chess Olympiad “Belgrade 96“ to be held in August“ (Večernje Novosti, Feb 12th 1996). The tournament should have been played in two parts and ten rounds, it gathered true legends of chess at that time – Karpov as the world champion, Bereyev and Salov who were amongst the leading chess players in the world, then the rising star in the world of chess – Peter Leko, and Serbian team chessplayers Ilincic and Popovic.

That is about it as far as the good things about this tournament are concerned. Only the first part of the tournament was played (5 rounds). Those five rounds were played during a nine day period because neither round was complete, so the matches had to be postponed constantly (some matches were postponed twice). There were problems with payments for Salov and Bereyev, Salov was even not allowed to leave Hotel “Moskva“ due to his unpaid bills!

The media described the tournament as “the failure of the decade“ (Politika, Feb 17th.1996) and the representatives of the sponsors backed out after seeing where the event was leading to, although they had previously fulfilled their financial obligations.

Then Valery Salov, the seventh best chessplayer in the world at the time, made his troubles during and after the tournament public at a press conference mentioning he had received only 40% of the money he had been promised and said: “I have never had anything like this happen to me before. I came to attend the promotion of the Children Olympiad and a tournament dedicated to peace, but I ended up in prison!“ (Politika, Feb 20th 1996).

Here is the full article: http://reports.chessdom.com/news-2010/karpov-kasparov-ilyumzhinov-svedok