There is to be an election for the presidency of the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) on 03/10/2018 at the Olympiad in Batumi, Georgia. Candidates with their “presidential ticket” (list of supporting would-be associated officers), had to be nominated by national federations by 03/07/2018.

The English Chess Federation’s board, meeting on 15/06/2018, decided to nominate Nigel Short, who had presumably asked them to do so. The other two candidates to succeed Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, are Arkady Dvorkovich (Russia) and Georgios Makropoulos (Greece), the latter being the current Deputy President. The Deputy President listed on Georgios Makropoulos’s ticket is ECF International Director Malcom Paine. It seems Nigel Short’s decision came after Malcolm Paine siding with the Greek candidate, and no friction between Short and Paine is to be inferred. The ECF’s announcement on its website on 03/07/2018 noted that, “Regardless of its nomination [of Nigel Short], the Board will remain open-minded as to how the ECF’s vote is exercised in October.”

What’s this got to do with Yorkshire? Well, not a lot, except in the overall view of chess, but, in the unlikely (dare I say) event of Nigel Short becoming FIDE President, he’d be the first FIDE President to have learnt to play chess while living in Yorkshire!

It’s fairly well documented that Nigel Short (born in Leigh, Lancs.) learnt chess around the age of five, from his father, but few sources mention the family was resident at the time, albeit briefly, in Sheffield. (Difficult to prove, but mentioned in a book by, if I recall correctly, Nigel’s father, David Short.)

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov (elected 1995) has hitherto always managed to get re-elected, despite being opposed in 2010 by Anatoly Karpov, and in 2014 by Gary Kasparov; so Nigel Short would be in good company if he didn’t get elected. Ilyumzhinov - the “zh” is pronounced like the “s” in “division” - a former president of Kalmykia, is at best “controversial”. The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control blacklisted Ilyumzhinov and his businesses for alleged support of the Syrian government back in 2015. FIDE withdrew him from its financial and political functions, but FIDE’s Swiss bankers, UBS, nevertheless went on to close FIDE’s bank account in May 2018.

Meanwhile, the FIDE Ethics Committee has been in action and on 13/07/2018 FIDE announced, “The Ethics Commission unanimously decides that Mr Ilyumzhinov is guilty of the violation of the FIDE Code of Ethics. Mr Ilyumzhinov is sanctioned with a temporary exclusion from holding any position for a period of 18 months from today, of which a period of 12 months are suspended for a period of 2 years. The immediately effective suspension is one of 6 months, commencing on 13 July 2018 and ending on 12 January 2019.” (See on FIDE website.)

Georgios Makropoulos received by far the most nominations, and seems likely to win, though Nigel Short seems to regard Makropoulos as “more of the old”. Either way, we look likely to end up with an English FIDE President or Deputy President, either of which would be a first, presumably.

Steve Mann