Kirsan wins election, as expected.

 

Kirsan, on hearing the election result, thanked Kasparov for ”raising the image” of chess thru his campaign efforts.  Throwing salt on an open wound?  OR, perhaps, just a polite way of saying ”FUCK YOU! I told you so”? We may never know…

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Just a brief note as later this evening I will give a longer analysis of the 2014 FIDE presidential election.  The incumbent president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, won by a convincing 110–61 margin. Apparently there was a mixture of temper and humour at today’s FIDE meeting leading up to the actual vote, but everybody seemed to be reasonable  (as much as could be expected from Nigel Short, that is) and things ended peacefully.  

Kirsan and Leong, sitting side by side.  Hard to believe that after all of the terrible lies that Leong wrote and publicized these past 9 or 10 months. But there is a saying that goes something like ”Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer!”

Today’s meeting before the actual vote was well documented vis a vis twitter.  Kasparov later calmly accepted his defeat, but remarked to one of the onlookers that it was a ”very sad day” for world chess.

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There is one thing that I want to comment on now, however, and that is the margin of Kirsan’s victory. It was smaller than many within the chess community expected. One analysis gave Kirsan 80 to 85 percent  of the popular vote as late as last Thursday. Possibly last minute campaigning by Kasparov’s camp made up for the difference…

 

In any case, how to explain such comments as this?

 

I know Malcolm Pein  (we get along very well) and he is a very intelligent, serious and talented individual.  But I am tempted to ask, metaphorically of course, on what planet does Malcolm really live on? Few in the chess world thought that ousting the incumbent was a serious possibility.  Kasparov started this campaign as a BIG underdog and then–to everyone’s surprise–he started to alienate virtually every country that might have otherwise voted against Kirsan. Canada included!  Europe was lost to Kasparov months ago when he insulted Georgia’s bid for the 2018 Olympiad!

And one could not trust a single word that appeared on Kasparov’s campaign site with regards to vote counts and endorsements. Almost everything was invented, blown out of proportion or distorted.

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Continued later this evening