Tuesday
Sep282010
Iljumzhinov Officially On The Ballot
Tuesday, September 28, 2010 at 1:25AM
Anatoly Karpov & team tried to have current FIDE President Kirsan Iljumzhinov tossed out of the current race for that job, but lost. With that obstacle cleared, I expect, unfortunately, that Iljumzhinov will win - no doubt he, like Florencio Campomanes before him, will have used the position to ingratiate himself with enough small countries to win re-election without much trouble. (The presidential election is determined by the votes of FIDE's member countries, where nations with barely a chess club having equal voting weight to chess powers like Russia, Germany and the United States.)
tagged Iljumzhinov, Karpov
Reader Comments (4)
Aside from the result of the case, one of the most interesting aspects is that the CAS considered chess within its purview. They, at least, considered it a sport, which could have implications for those countries where chess is not regarded as a sport.
So China, India and Brazil who support Ilyumzhinov are not so "big" as Germany and USA?
[DM: In terms of chess numbers, no country is as big as Germany, which is #1 in rated players by a long way. That said, I'm not trying to insult the countries you mentioned, which are all very important chess powers too. But the majority of major chess countries favor Karpov - at least this was my impression - while Iljumzhinov, like Campomanes before him, will almost surely win based on a bigger coalition of tiny (wrt chess) countries.]
Maybe they should adopt an electoral vote type of system, so the countries with more chess players get more votes.
The only issue with having a purely electoral system is that the little countries will have almost no say in anything. However, it would still be a more fair election system than what it is currently, where Illyumzhinov can just "cheat the system" so to speak. It comes down to common sense: if a handful of countries are representative of the majority of the chess world, then those countries should have more voting power. Especially for elections.
[DM: It depends on the electoral system. In the US, with two legislative bodies (one apportioned by population, the other where each state is equally represented), the less populous states absolutely have a say in what goes on.]