Spectating the 86th FIDE Congress

The 86th FIDE Congress is currently in session and, as with all FIDE Congresses, the various working documents offer plenty of insight into FIDE's operations and activities. Here are a few topics that I've been following on this blog. I'll look at them more closely in future posts.

In connection with the 'Chess in School' series, specifically Pedagogical Pecking Order and The Trainers’ Tree, are two related topics (the numbered bullets correspond to FIDE's numbering from an advance announcement, Executive Board Agenda and Annexes):-

13. Trainers’ Commission report.
17. Chess in Schools Commission report.

As a follow-up to FIDE's 'Principles of Chess Journalism':-

21. Journalists’ Commission proposals.

As an introduction to a nascent project, first seen in 2015 a Zonal Year, where I noted, 'FIDE Online Arena will provide three qualifiers for the World Cup 2015':-

22. Agenda for the Online Commission's meeting.
23. Proposal for conducting over the board tournaments in FIDE Online Arena.
24. Proposal for awarding winners of FIDE Official Online Championships with accommodation to the relevant over the board FIDE Official Competitions.

Since I can't escape today's post by just listing ideas for future posts, let's look at one annex in particular:-

29. Report from the Continental President of Americas, J. Vega.

As I noted in FIDE Election: Four More Years, Jorge Vega, the president of FIDE America, played a key role in last year's election between Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and Garry Kasparov. His thoughts on that election are an important part of the historical record. The annex 29 report incorporates several documents that quote Vega.

From 'REPORT 2014 • Jorge Vega, Continental President':-

2014 was an election year as we all know, Mr. Ilyumzhinov aspired to be re-elected FIDE president. His opponent was Ex-World Champion Garry Kasparov who proved to be a formidable opponent. The final result, 110 to 61 votes, can give a false impression of the difficult and hard battle whereby it was difficult to tell who would win the election.

As in previous elections, America being the continent with the least number of federations, was the cornerstone of Iljumzhinov’s victory, handing him the highest number of votes per continent followed by Europe, Asia and Africa. Victory always gives a sense of satisfaction that compensates for the doubts or the sufferings during the campaign. It was demonstrated that the attacks by some of the members from the Kasparov camp lacked veracity and were ignorant to the reality of America. In the end they were embarrassed, but we must recognize Mr. Kasparov never attacked America’s position, but the attacks came from second and third less significant parties.

Also of interest from the same document are Vega's thoughts on the financial state of world class chess.

From a global point of view the scenario is not very optimistic. We face an economic crisis generated by the fall in the price of oil together with the difficulties facing Russia. The fall in oil prices will affect the budgets of oil producing countries and adjustments will be made. The majority of the venues of important events in FIDE are in oil producing countries so it should not surprise us that there will be cut backs which will affect FIDE income.

The economic situation in Russia is also of concern due to the devaluation of the rouble by 50%. We all know that many of FIDE main events are held in the Russian Federation especially the Grand Prix and the reduction or cancellation of this will affect FIDE income.

The same themes appear in 'Minutes of the CCA General Assembly; Cali, Colombia - 2nd July 2015 • Presentation of president’s reports'; NB: CCA here stands for 'Confederation of Chess for America', not to be confused with the same acronym used for the 'Continental Chess Association', an organizer of high-level tournaments in the USA.

I am going to insist that we preserve the unity in America at all cost, we must make a differentiation between adversary and enemy, adversaries are those who in principle had a different position to the American block with reference to the candidacy of Kirsan, they deserve all our respect, but they have stop being adversaries after the elections, they deserve our respect, we must have an open relationship that must be respected. Enemies are those who try to sabotage the unity in America, speading rumors, lies and any sorts of untruths, basically it is based on personal ambitions, those are the ones we have to combat and are the enemies, America is powerful due to the unity it commands, we can say that the American block guaranties 24/26 votes at elections, if this disappears we will then be considered as in other continents where different groups supports the same candidate for president, but lacks unity.

[...]

The world is in a financial crisis, specifically with the drop in oil prices, consequently the budgets of nations have been cut, ofcourse the fall in oil prices has hit very hard in Russia, and the ruble has lost value, as a consecunce this will affect the events in FIDE because many of the events are held in the Russian Republics, or in countries that produce oil.

There is much more to the annex than these excerpts, most of it local to FIDE's American continents.