Martin Regan wrote: But the blame is with some of the rabble element on the board.
None of this would have happened, had Andrew Paulson not made a bid for the ECF Presidency as a stepping stone to potential greater glory as ECU Vice President and after Europe the world.
There have been tensions and policy differences between members of the ECF Board in the past, but never previously have those who run quite a bit of chess in England fallen out quite so drastically with the ECF President. That said, I don't totally understand their silence. If they are accused of being Pein minions and challenged in election by candidates carrying a Paulson coupon, shouldn't they state their case in public?
(edit) David Sedgwick reminds me of the 2008 precedent where the CEO, the Junior Director, the International Director and one of the non-Execs all walked out at once. We never totally got the whole story on that as to whether it was a dispute with the then President or a reaction to rejection of their preferred policies by the voting membership. It had little to do with policy towards FIDE elections. (/edit)
There has been a long standing ECF policy towards FIDE Presidential elections, dating back at least to 2006 which can be summarised in two words "Kirsan out". Remarkably, apart from intermittent attempts by apologists for the FIDE establishment to disrupt it, it's a policy that very few ECF voting members or the wider English chess public would disagree with. If AP wanted to avoid controversy on this front, he had to buy into it and was indeed challenged on this pre-election. That's not to say a review wasn't in order given one of Kasparov's associates and one or two of the policies espoused by Kasparov. The problem being is that if you support "No to Kasparov", the other side of that coin is to extend Kirsan's presidency from 19 years to 23.
I doubt whether the election of the ECU President is that much of an issue, objectively "none of the above" should be preferred. As Nigel suggests, if you want a tie-break, Zurab is perhaps the "official" FIDE candidate whilst Danailov is "opposition". For the ECF President to line up with the FIDE establishment would be sending the wrong signals. This does seem to be the final row which forced everything public. We should recall that Nigel himself was on an unsuccessful ECU slate in 2010 which attracted no adverse comment.
Little interest surrounds the real identity of the nom-de-plume used to leak the draft Kasparov-Leong "money for votes" contract. I believe I have seen speculation that it was the ECF President. Certainly he was quick off the mark to comment upon it.