2022 World Chess Federation Elections

Updates

Updates will follow here through Sunday (note for Australian audiences: Chennai time is four and a half hours behind Australia).  Times in Chennai time.

10am: The General Assembly is underway with at last count 155 voters present (98 needed) but no electoral business has happened yet as there are several reports to get through.  Unsurprisingly the wifi is overloaded which may limit updates, though I also have another connection which is not great either.

10:33 The election process is now starting.

10:40 The nominated scrutineers have been appointed. The three tickets are present and are about to start their 15 minute presentations.

The order of the presentations is Baryshpolets, Kouatly, Dvorkovich.

11:00 The Baryshpolets/Nielsen presentation was speeches by both consisting almost entirely of fiery attacks on Dvorkovich over Ukraine and Russia.

11:15 After a very entertaining presentation including endorsements from Chris Gayle and Usain Bolt, the Kouatly/Wilkinson ticket has withdrawn citing insufficient support.

11:55 Voting is underway.

12:50 Votes are being counted.

1:15 Result has been announced as being ten minutes away. 

194 delegates 179 voters 1 informal 5 abstentions. Dvorkovich wins by a massive margin 157-16.

2:45 Voting for Vice-Presidents is about to start.

VP Round 1: A bit of chaos here - Xie Jun (China) won in the first round with 113 votes as did Sheikh Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Mualla with 89, but there is a lot of comment re Georgios Makropoulos having been declared elected on the first ballot with 80 votes, seemingly short of the quota of 89.  The rules are being explained as allowing a candidate to be elected with less than the quota because both genders were represented in the first three. Weird rules if that's correct.  And it is: here are the rules:

22.8   To assure gender balance inside FIDE Council, the election of these four Vice Presidents shall take place in two rounds. With the first vote, the General Assembly shall elect three (3) Vice Presidents, among all candidates. With the second vote, the General Assembly shall elect one (1) Vice President. If the candidates elected in the first round are all of the same gender, only candidates of the opposite gender can be voted in the second round. However, if the most voted candidate from the opposite gender received at least 50% of the valid votes in the first round, this candidate will be considered directly elected without the second vote. Only the candidates who participated in the first round are eligible for the second round. If among the candidates in the second round there is only one representative of the gender not represented after the first round of elections, this candidate will be considered directly elected without a second vote. If after the first round of elections there are both genders represented among Vice-Presidents, representatives of both genders may participate in the second round of elections. However, if the fourth most voted candidate received at least 50% of the valid votes in the first round, this candidate will be considered directly elected without a second vote.

5:45 Michael Khordakovsky (USA) elected on the second ballot with 67/171. Full totals not yet available but he won easily.

7:06 The final contested election, a four way first past the post ballot for a casual vacancy on the Ethics Commission, has commenced.  (Edit: won by Pedro Dominguez (DOM).)

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Intro Post

Greetings from Chennai, India, or more specifically from the Leela Palace Hotel, venue of this year's FIDE Congress.  I've covered chess politics as a sideline on this website over the years and while I haven't had the time to do the sort of lead-in coverage as in 2014 and 2018, nonetheless I here provide some backdrop to the elections to be held today.  I am attending these elections in my capacity as the Australian Chess Federation's delegate to FIDE (the world chess federation).  I will be posting live updates here and on my Twitter feed as things happen.  

This year's election is ostensibly the one and only re-election bid for President Arkady Dvorkovich, who defeated incumbent Georgios Makropolous 103-78 in Batumi four years and another world ago.  FIDE introduced term limits in 2018 so unless that changes Dvorkovich only serve one more term.  In general Dvorkovich's term has been successful: despite the obstacles to over the board chess during the pandemic, the game is thriving.  FIDE's financial position has improved considerably, the financial and in cases bureaucratic burden on Federations has eased, and FIDE is no longer dogged by the scandals, financial problems and eccentricities of the Ilyumzhinov era.  True, there is the curious situation that the World Champion Magnus Carlsen has got bored of defending his title (which will now become uncoupled from any claim to confirm who the world's strongest player is), after being given a rather short deadline to confirm (or, as he did, deny) his interest in defending it.

Pawn To Ukraine Four?

Under normal circumstances, even normal global pandemic circumstances, President Dvorkovich would be re-elected unopposed.  But he has just a little problem - he is Russian.  Not only that but he is a former senior Russian politician - a one-time Deputy President under Dmitry Medvedev among other things.  The matter of how FIDE should respond to the invasion of one of the world's great chessplaying nations, Ukraine, by one of the greatest, Russia, has been the main issue defining this year's election.

As with other sports, chess has had to deal with the question of how to sanction Russia for invading Ukraine.  The current solution is to ban Russian and Belorussian teams, thus neither of these are competing at this year's Chess Olympiad being held nearby, but to allow individuals to participate under the FIDE flag.  With the obvious exception of former World Championship contender Sergey Karjakin, whose outspoken social media support for Putin's war saw him suspended for bringing chess into disrepute, a lot of leading Russian players are opposed to Russia's actions.  Despite this there is a view that says that all Russian players should be banned whatever their viewpoint, and also that FIDE cannot be led by a Russian (whatever his views) at this time - whether because it makes FIDE too conflicted, because it makes FIDE a tool of Russian propaganda, or because of any risk that FIDE could again be a target of investment sanctions.  

Comments by Dvorkovich opposing the war and sympathising with Ukrainian civilians have been widely reported, and have led to a lot of support in the chess community and some denunciations in Russia.  Not everyone is impressed though.  Some opponents however have focused on less well publicised and now deleted comments about the same time that (they claim deliberately) echo Russia's bogus "denazification" pretext and that definitely appear to criticise companies that have boycotted Russia over the war.

The Russia issue (mostly) drew a number of prospective opponents, but at no stage was the opposition especially co-ordinated.  At one stage there were so many known and rumoured rival tickets that when the Dvorkovich camp issued a rather pained email to scotch baseless rumours that it was encouraging another ticket to run as a fallback mock opposition and denounce those involved in this ticket, it was impossible for me to have any idea which particular known or rumoured rival ticket they were referring to.

Anyway the field of opponents has narrowed.  Four opposing tickets sought to nominate.  A ticket in the first instance names an intending President and Vice President, and needs a nominator from each of the four FIDE continents.  The intending ticket of Enyonam Sewa Fumey (Togo)/Stuart Fancy (PNG) fell at the hurdle of being unable to secure a European nominator, a fate which contained a dose of symbolism since its platform was anti-Eurocentric.  The ticket of Inalbek Cheripov (Belgium)/ Lewis Ncube (Zambia) was scratched a few days ago citing the lead candidate's health - Cheripov, originally from Chechnya, is not a well known figure in the chess world but Ncube is a very experienced African chess politician.  

Two rival tickets are still standing (insert relevant disclaimer, as deals are sometimes done leading to withdrawals).  The first announced was the #FightForChess ticket of US-resident Ukrainian Grandmaster Andrii Baryshpolets (who must be one of the youngest candidates to have run for FIDE President) and prominent Danish grandmaster, coach and chess personality Peter Heine Nielsen (best known as second to World Champions Anand and Carlsen).

The second is the, as far as I know, nameless ticket of current Deputy President Bachar Kouatly (France), a grandmaster, and former French champion .  His running mate is Ian Wilkinson from Jamaica, an Honorary Vice-President of FIDE and a senior lawyer and QC who sits on FIDE's Constitutional Commission.  Both have been Presidents of their respective Federations.  Kouatly is a veteran of FIDE politics and was nearly elected President in the mid-1990s.  Kouatly was part of Dvorkovich's 2018 team (as was Fumey) but decided to run especially over the Russia issue.  Australia acted as one of the formal nominators for this ticket.

Both these tickets have been campaigning for votes in person, but I've seen no physical ground campaign from either beyond that - no campaign stands, advertised functions, banners etc.   The only conventional large scale campaign has been the #SayChess campaign headed by Dvorkovich and former World Champion (and Chennai local) Viswanathan Anand.  It has a stand strategically placed at the entry to one of the hotel's major dining halls and has hosted a reception and a cocktail party.  ("Say Chess" is an obvious pun on "Say Cheese" but might also be translated as an attempt to shift the focus to the game and away from geopolitics.)

The relatively low key nature of the Presidential campaign (with neither challenger bothering my inbox in a month!) is in some contrast to the fight for four elected Vice-President positions, with (at last count) thirteen candidates - Makropoulos the one whose fate is, I guess, the most interesting for the psephology of FIDE.  

On a technical level, many changes have been brought in to attempt to speed up what in the past have been farcically slow elections, including increasing the number of Delegates voting at a time and even the extraordinary suggestion that Delegates might try attending the General Assembly on time!  

All voting is first past the post with runoffs (and the ability to cast up to as many votes as there are vacancies for elections for multiple positions).  One interesting twist is that voters can specifically vote "abstain", and if they do so then their vote does not contribute towards the baseline for clearing 50% and avoiding a runoff, but informal votes (blank, too many numbered, disallowed markings, marks outside the square, signed votes etc) do contribute towards the baseline.  The Vice-President ballot also has an affirmative action component to ensure at least one female candidate wins (if not on the first ballot then eventually).  Also on the card are elections for the Constitutional Commission and the Ethics and Disciplinary Commission.  The latter is effectively FIDE's internal law court.  Together with the Verification Commission (which is the General Assembly's own chosen audit service) these are the only commissions that are elected, not appointed.  The Verification Commission's election cycle has now been uncoupled from that of the Presidency.

Another novelty is that this year there will be centrally nominated "scrutineers" (election counters, what Australia calls "scrutineers" are called "observers" in FIDE) who the Assembly can accept or reject.  This is better for the neutrality of the counting process but at the cost of probably being unable to use the election of scrutineers as a proxy for the Presidential election.

I could write much more about these elections but I do have to get up in about six hours to vote in them. Updates to follow!