ECF and the FIDE Presidential election

[Clive Blackburn]

Just listened to a fascinating Radio 4 programme about Kirsan, "Crossing Continents" at 11am today (repeated from Mon 8.30pm).

Fascinating stuff, including a contribution from Nigel Short.

I'm sorry if this has already been picked up, I couldn't see any mention of it.

Well worth a listen on iplayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0833sff

[JustinHorton]

Mentioned here (and now here) and for that matter here! I won't get the chance to listen until Saturday (certainly not to the whole thing) but I understand that it made a bad start....

[Roger de Coverly]

but I understand that it made a bad start....

in the context of the whole piece, it was attempting to demonstrate the importance of the President of the World Chess Federation. Like Agon's marketing plan, it builds on a false premise of the numbers out there.

[Clive Blackburn]

I am glad that it didn't go unnoticed

[Angus French]

One thing about which I'm curious - the judgement seems to have been made on 10 November. Has this summary (is that the correct term?) only just been published? I say I'm curious because you'd have expected this to be a big issue over the past fortnight, even if there's been some actual chess going on to distract us all from the politics.

Another question on timings: Ilyumzhinov made his complaint to the FIDE Ethics Commission on 5 May 2014 but it wasn't until 5 September 2015 - a whole 16 months later - that the Commission reached its guilty decision (with the further decision to ban Leong and Kasparov from holding office coming later still). How come it took so long and shouldn't the matter have been concluded before the election (which took place in August 2014)?

[NickFaulks]

You will see in Section B that there was a Hearing planned for Tromso, ahead of the election, but this was abandoned at the last minute at Leong's request. Matters were then conducted by exchange of letters, which always strikes me as an abominably slow process.