French Chess President Impeached

[harrylamb]

Just out of curiosity, who gets to vote at these meetings?

It is interesting to compare the voting rights at the ECF AGM with the FFE AGM. I think only clubs have voting rights at the French AGM. At the ECF AGM clubs are not allowed to vote.

But the proxy situation seems similar at both AGMs.

The General Meeting... brought together 66 delegates representing 42.5% of the clubs of our federation and 51.5% of the vote"

On one of the votes these 66 delegates cast 1019 votes

[Niall Doran]

On one of the votes these 66 delegates cast 1019 votes

If I'm not mistaken, clubs who can't attend the AGM generally give their vote to someone who can attend. So one delegate can end up with lots of votes for all the clubs that he or she represents.

[Niall Doran]

Google Translate is only a limited help in translating the documents, since a knowledge of French accounting terms appears necessary. I didn't really figure out whether the FFE has sufficient reserves to live out the problems of a one year loss of tens or hundreds of thousands of Euros, or whether it is now teetering on the edge of insolvency.

Which documents were you trying to translate? Stick up the link and I'll see if I can make any sense of it, even though my knowledge of French is better than my knowledge of accounting terms!

[Roger de Coverly]

Which documents were you trying to translate?

Like the ECF, the FFE has put a number of its meeting papers on its website.

So the parent website is
http://www.echecs.asso.fr/

and the various documents

http://www.echecs.asso.fr/Actu.aspx?Ref=9504
http://www.echecs.asso.fr/Actu.aspx?Ref=9502
http://www.echecs.asso.fr/Actu.aspx?Ref=7005
http://www.echecs.asso.fr/Actu.aspx?Ref=9458


The html files translate into Frenglish, the pdfs can be more difficult to make sense of.

There's
http://clubs.echecs.asso.fr/Documents/8 ... tonome.pdf

That's perhaps the important document, where the President tries to envisage a Federation independent of sponsorship.

http://clubs.echecs.asso.fr/Documents/8 ... estion.pdf

http://clubs.echecs.asso.fr/Documents/8 ... _moral.pdf

http://clubs.echecs.asso.fr/Documents/8 ... sorier.pdf

(accounts)
http://clubs.echecs.asso.fr/Documents/8 ... 2_2015.pdf

(audit opinion)
http://clubs.echecs.asso.fr/Documents/8 ... omptes.pdf

(proposed membership costs)
http://clubs.echecs.asso.fr/Documents/8 ... ifaire.pdf

(projected budgets)
http://clubs.echecs.asso.fr/Documents/8 ... ionnel.pdf

[Mick Norris]

On one of the votes these 66 delegates cast 1019 votes

If I'm not mistaken, clubs who can't attend the AGM generally give their vote to someone who can attend. So one delegate can end up with lots of votes for all the clubs that he or she represents.

If you look at one of the items linked to by Justin i.e. 2013 AGM, you get

836 clubs were eligible to cast 2136 votes

so it isn't OCOV (one club one vote), maybe the number of votes depends on the number of players in the club who are members of the FFE

It goes on to say

Of this number 591 clubs with 1642 votes took part in the process

which admittedly doesn't tell you how many of the 591 turned up (albeit you would need a big venue if they all did), but looking further I find that 241 of the 591 voted by "correpsondence" which I assume is Google translate for proxy - so if 350 turned up that's impressive

Given the size of France, wherever the meeting was held is a very long way from some of the clubs, so not surprising they don't chose to turn up in person (the same as we have with the WECU and NCCU voting members)

Also interesting just how close the election was

Diego Salazar won 812 votes (50.5%) and Leo Battesti won 795 votes (49.5%). 35 ballots were blank or not valid.

I know the defeated candidate organises Corsican chess events

[Roger de Coverly]

I know the defeated candidate organises Corsican chess events

He appears to be an important figure in French chess. His name has been put forward in the past as a possible challenger for the role of FIDE President and he was part of the Bessel Kok challenge in 2006.

http://en.chessbase.com/post/fide-elect ... -the-march

[Niall Doran]

Thanks Roger. According to this link:

http://clubs.echecs.asso.fr/Documents/8 ... estion.pdf

"Globalement, le "trou" à combler serait donc, au bas mot, de l'ordre de 400 000 euros." (last paragraph in Section B, page 3) meaning that a conservative estimate puts the 'hole' in the budget at €400 000.

[John McKenna]

Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores
Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit.
Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,
Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.

(Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to he erected upon the site of the Jacobin Club House at Paris.)

The Pit and the Pendulum, Edgar Allan Poe