Karpov, on the current FIDE situation
Karpov on the future of FIDE
Insightful and brutally honest interview with former World Champion Anatoly Karpov on the RCF (Russian Chess Federation) website today.
The end for FIDE?
As I am currently writing a longer article on the status of FIDE’s 2018 presidential election, with regards to this week’s many developments, I will just leave it to the reader’s discretion if he wants to read the entire interview. (You should!)
My article will likely appear sometime in the coming 4 or 5 hours, and might include excerpts of an interview with a key member of Kirsan’s re-election campaign. Stay tuned!
In essence, the FIDE presidential board this week appears to be spiralling out of control and might even be trying to short circuit any possibility of a fair and democratic election later this year. Makropoulos only yesterday announced, via the FIDE website, that the presidential board had already moved to try to convince the Ethics Commission to declare Kirsan ineligible for re-election.
As readers of my blog will have already understood, the famous Ethics Commission is a politically biased entity – a type of kangeroo court – that has lost all credibility in the recent past with some of its more outrageous decisions.
The Kovalyov/Azmaiparashvili scandal of late 2017, for instance, shows how the Ethics Commission merely tries to cover FIDE’s own ass. Azmai confessed on several YouTube videos to making racist remarks towards Kovalyov before the game. Any court of law would have considered that more than sufficient to bring a strong condemnation against Azmai. But what did the Ethics Commission do? They wanted more ‘proof’…and threw the whole case out!
If Makropoulos gets his way, then Kirsan will be forced to appeal to CAS to declare this decision invalid, deepening the incredible mess that Kirsan and Makropoulos have already unleashed upon the chess community.
Do we really want to see Nigel Short as the next FIDE president?