The battle for ECU Presidential elections begins

[benedgell]

I had the opportunity to meet with Silvio Danailov at the Q & A session organised by the ECF this evening. Have to say he came across very well.

[Stewart Reuben]

It amazes me that people have confused two completely separate elections.
That for the FIDE presidency.
That for the ECU presidency.
What will happen is that first the FIDE Presidential ticket will be voted for. That being settled and the extra VPs agreed on, the Continental Presidencies are voted on by the federations in their own meetings.
We have two candidates for FIDE P. Andrew Paulson would vote for none of the above. Nigel Short and the ECF for GK. I would vote for GK, despite the presence of Ignatius Leong on his ticket.
We have two candidates for ECU P. AP of course would vote for Azmay. Nigel would vote for Danailov. I would vote for none of the above.

Azmay is absolutely correct though, you should try to work with people, not against them. Whoever is elected, I would continue to try to do so. The ECF influence on presidential proceedings is negligible. The English influence in some commissions is substantial and could be more so if we had more members in those commissions.

[benedgell]

A picture of the ECF's meeting with SD is on his Twitter page.

[NickFaulks]

I had the opportunity to meet with Silvio Danailov at the Q & A session organised by the ECF this evening. Have to say he came across very well.

I'm not at all surprised, he's a good speaker. What did he say?

[Mick Norris]

A picture of the ECF's meeting with SD is on his Twitter page.

https://twitter.com/SilvioDanailov/stat ... 32/photo/1

[John Upham]

You can almost see some of the participants!

[Mick Norris]

Do you want to name them all?

[NickFaulks]

I would vote for GK, despite the presence of Ignatius Leong on his ticket.

Wow, turkeys do vote for Christmas. That's not in any way a criticism - on the contrary, Stewart's position is highly principled.

Obviously, my own federation could never support Kasparov. After the way he described Bermuda in the NYT, we would abandon any prospect of Government support. This does not prevent me from having a personal view.

The question is whether four years of Kasparov Leong ( and it would be only four years ) is the price we must pay to see the back of Kirsan. I must admit that in 2010 I did not expect Kirsan to run again. I don't think he did. I suspect he is doing so only because a lot of people are horrified by the idea of Kasparov getting hold of FIDE, and are keen to see him faced by the strongest opponent, which is unquestionably Kirsan. People on this forum are naturally influenced by the state of affairs in England, where chess has been in decline, so it is easy to forget that in most of the non-Western world the Kirsan years have seen a great improvement in the state of chess and, rightly or wrongly, FIDE is given credit for this.

Part of me would like to see Kasparov Leong win, just so I can say that I told you so when it all goes wrong, but it would be very ugly indeed. The things about which RdC complains so bitterly, even though they never actually happened, would happen. Some in England would wonder, as they have come to do about Saddam Hussain, whether getting rid of Kirsan was really worth the unpleasantness.

[Stewart Reuben]

Danailov almost never says anything constructive in the FIDE General Assembly or Executive Board meetings. All he does is grumble. Naturally some of those whingeing is justified.
Kirsan + Danailov will do nothing for Europe or England. Kirsan + Azmay would be better.
I was very surprised that the Bulgarian didn't stand for the FIDE Presidency himself.
When Ali lost the ECU Presidency to Danailov he went totally bonkers. A pity that.

[Roger de Coverly]

When Ali lost the ECU Presidency to Danailov he went totally bonkers.

Is that much of a surprise that he lost? Wasn't he regarded as the official FIDE Candidate, much the same as Zurab? European Federations, not least because they have to have regard to the opinion of their players, can be sceptical, hostile even towards Kirsan apologists. I don't imagine that his persecution of Atalik and his proposals that you needed permission to play outside your Federation went down particularly well.

But Ali v Danailov or Turkey v Bulgaria has developed into one of those long running feuds.

[NickFaulks]

Wasn't he regarded as the official FIDE Candidate, much the same as Zurab?

No, I don't think he was. After all, Ali originally became a candidate in order to pursue his vendetta against Boris Kutin, a Kirsan stalwart, who only later stood down. Also, he had recently changed sides after being on Bessel's ticket. It is true that Danailov was at the time on the same side as Karpov ( they since seem to have fallen out ), but I don't think this defined the vote in the final round. Ali lost because, unlike Kutin in previous elections, he was perceived as a poor candidate.

As I recall from Khanty, there was a candidate running on a straight anti-FIDE ticket, but he didn't do very well at all.

Edit. For clarity, in 2010 Kutin himself had no difficulty giving his full support to both Danailov and Kirsan, and many Europeans would have followed his lead. If he thought they were the best candidates, what's wrong with that?

[Chris Rice]

Further coverage on the huge bid €14.5 million bid by the Georgian government to stage the World Cup 2017/Olympiad 2018. Azmai is creating a momentum that its going to be difficult for Danailov to compete with.

http://en.chessbase.com/post/chess-players-in-georgia

However, the Georgian government are also pretty miffed that the deadline for the bids were extended but went ballistic when they saw what Danailov was tweeting and have accused Danailov of some dirty tricks in an open letter to the ECU Board:

Here's the juicy bits:

We prepared a BID and presented it to the FIDE Secretariat with the accordance to all the necessary standards and procedures.

One can imagine how surprised we were when heard that FIDE Presidential Board, held on March 30 in Khanty-Mansiysk, extended the BID application deadline until April 15. However, drawing from the global chess interests to hold the best possible chess Olympiad 2018, we decided not to protest, but to adapt to the decision made by the FIDE officials.

We are certain that we’ve done everything to host the top class Olympiad and established equal living and playing conditions of European standards for each and every federation.

When we first heard about Mr. Danailov’s puzzle released on his tweeter page we hoped that he would reveal the plans and secrets of FIDE leaders because as he was the representative of our European continent at the FIDE Presidential board meeting.

“Silvio Danailov @SilvioDanailov Apr 7
Chess puzzle of the day: Why Makro&friends “FIDE PB” illegally extended the deadline for submitting bids for the 2018 Olympiad to April 15th?”

Unfortunately, we were disappointed with the answer. We have not received any support from Mr. Danailov, but we discovered that president of the ECU (whose primary responsibility is to support and protect the interests of the European National Federations) openly supports 12 million USD bid of South Africa against Georgia’s 20 million USD bid.

Silvio Danailov @SilvioDanailov Apr 7
So far there are two official bids, the one from South Africa being a clear favorite. But they are opposition and need to receive a lesson

Silvio Danailov @SilvioDanailov Apr 7
That’s why Makro&friends are preparing a new bid from Africa in order to provoke mess,grab some African votes& try to spoil SA bid #smart

Besides, it should be noted that Georgian Chess Federation has done its best to support Mr. Danailov’s candidature to the ECU Presidential elections 2010 and helped him to overcome the crisis connected with the Women’s European Championship in 2011 with holding one of the successful tournament in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Apart from all above mentioned we also found out that despite Georgian Arbiters’ high qualifications none of them represented in the Tromso Olympiad Arbiters list sent by Mr. Danailov to FIDE.

Nevertheless, due to the fact that Mr. Zurab Azmaiparashvili runs for ECU Presidential elections, we once again preferred not to respond to those unacceptable acts and tried to understand the political motivation of Mr. Danailov’s decision.

Finally, we saw the official answer on FIDE website to the Danailov’s Puzzle (http://www.fide.com/component/content/a ... mpiad.html) and found out that he attempted to mislead the world chess community by representing the situation as if everyone except himself was guilty. We would like to ask a rhetorical question to the ECU President: what is Mr. Danailov’s aim of abolishing the ECU regulations and supporting the South African bid.

Georgian Chess Federation is asking the honorable members of the ECU board:
1. To discuss and assess the facts of misleading Chess Society, abolishing our regulations and make appropriate and reasonable decision.
2. To support Georgian bid as the best one."

Sincerely,
GM Giorgi Giorgadze
President of GCF

http://www.chessdom.com/open-letter-of- ... ederation/

[Roger de Coverly]

Perhaps because of Danailov adopting a higher profile, the ECU positions now appear more important than they used to be.

It took two contested elections to remove Gerry Walsh as the English FIDE delegate, in 2006 and 2009. In neither case was it said in defending his position that he was a Vice-President of the European Chess Union and thus a person of influence.

[NickFaulks]

Presumably the VP position is what you make it. The President always had considerable influence.

[Stewart Reuben]

Gerry Walsh's great skill is that people like him. He is not a radical. Eventually Council, by a very narrow margin, decided that he was not active enough in various ways.
David Jarrett's skill is that he gets things done. The gain by World Chess was, to some extent, our loss. But he is resident back here in England. He is now in charge of some FIDE special projects.
Nigel Freeman is FIDE Treasurer and also Executive Director. (Of course David was his predecessor.) He is resident in Greece and formerly Bermuda. But he was born in and educated in England, going to Harrow.
Are you so certain England lacks influence?

FIDE works on the somewhat old-fashioned principle that, in-between congress, the President has full executive responsibility. That is outmoded because of the much greater ease now of international communication.