My latest post concerns the FIDE election, won by the incumbent President:
Just Got Fooled Again
xpertchesslessons.wordpress.com … led-again/
Kirsan is bad.
But to beat him you need a good candidate.
To many of the national chess federations who cast ballots, Garry Kasparov is the guy who hijacked (with Nigel Short) the world championship in 1993, causing more than a decade of damage.
He’s the guy who later demanded that Kirsan repair the damage to the championship more quickly – and then he opposed the Kramnik-Topalov match that reunified the title.
He’s the guy who, while heading the Grandmasters Association, declared, “Let’s destroy FIDE.”
He’s the guy who alienated mild-mannered Magnus Carlsen after being hired as his coach.
He’s the guy who got into a bizarre shouting contest at the last FIDE election with a delegate from Bermuda.
And, whether it’s fair or not, he’s also seen by many in the Third World as a Manhattan millionaire with neo-con views.
To repeat, Kirsan is bad.
But was there any worse candidate than Kasparov?
There’s no evidence that a “good candidate” would have made a dent into Illyumzhinov’s base. Nor is there support that “many of the national chess federations” voted against Kasparov because of his and Short’s separation from FIDE. (Those in the West with many more GMs and ostensibly more at stake seem rather forgiving, ey?)
I also see no evidence that Carlsen is mild-mannered when it comes to his chess education and training. The reasons he abandoned the coaching relationship with Kasparov were undoubtedly his own, and it’s ridiculous to suggest that Carlsen was alienated in a way that had anything to do with this election. Or maybe you have support for such a statement?
A bizarre shouting match? Make the point. Why does this have relevance? Have you ever watched C-SPAN?
“Neocon” is one of the slanders of choice these days. One can virtually bandy about any term with impunity when it’s placed as it is in the sentence above. And I won’t ask where the support that “many in the Third World” see him as having “neo-con views” comes from–that support doesn’t exist. Neither is it intuitively obvious or that it had a jot to do with this election. It’s rather a sloppy rhetorical device by which one can say anything and pretend that thing is wrapped in silk.
Hopefully you’ve finished your dump and you’re stepping a bit lighter this evening.
History allows the first allegations to be either verified or refuted. It seems that if the first allegations on this list are true, it would cause voters doubt about trusting the new leadership. What would be interesting would be to post a list of substantiated claims about the current leadership that would make a candidate with this background (if true) palatable.
I believe Kirsan will reign until (and possibly after) death.