1st Quarter Presidential Board Meeting

Continuing to Struggle with Transparency 

There is a difference between being transparent and being invisible, and I think that Dvorkovich’s FIDE has not yet perceived this.

I have written here on this blog, on numerous occasions since October 3rd 2018, when Arkady Dvorkovich was first elected President, FIDE lacks transparency. For example:

1) There is limited access by the  press and public to the Presidential Board (PB) meetings.

2) The PB members are themselves bound by a confidentiality agreement.

3) The PB’s decisions are not open to discussion.

While FIDE should be congratulated for quickly publishing on its website (today, March 7) a ‘press release’ of the just finished PB meeting, there is a conspicuous absence of any DETAILS of any of the issues mentioned in the press release.

The reader may be forgiven for getting the impression that he is even more in the dark about what happened at the PB meeting AFTER reading the press release than BEFORE reading it. There now exists  a vacuum – deliberately emptied of all relevant information, where before there was merely a lack of official communication.

The reader would not be alone in feeling this way: 

Numerous times in the press release specific items were mentioned, but NOT A SINGLE detail was divulged. For example, it was mentioned that there will be some new rules for the next World Championship Match, but the reader is completely left in the dark.

That is what visibility is all about. This is, infact, the definition of invisibility. After reading today’s press release, it is clear that Dvorkovich has very little interest in being transparent.