2022 FIDE Congress, Presidency and Presidential Election

[Kevin Bonham]

The General Assembly finished all the elections last night, though the confirmed results of the Zonal elections have not been announced yet because of a dispute in one Zone that is still being resolved. The General Assembly today moves on to budgeting, policy motions mainly relating to membership and the approval of Uzbekistan's bid for the 2026 Olympiad.

Yesterday in the Vice-President elections for four positions these candidates were elected on the first ballot: Xie Jun (China) 113 votes, Sheikh Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Mualla 89, Georgios Makropoulos 80. (thirteen candidates - it is basically first past the post for the first 3 places on the first ballot, while the fourth place is conditional on gender quota and on how many votes the fourth candidate got.) Anastasia Sorokina (AUS) was in fourth place on the first ballot but was overtaken by Michael Khordakovsky (USA) who won comfortably on the second round with 67 votes.

[Kevin Bonham]

FIDE has readmitted the ASEAN Chess Confederation as an affiliated organisation after a break of a few years. Ignatius Leong discussed plans to hold "ASEAN+" tournaments that would include China, Japan, India, Australia etc.

[MichaelBaron]

This is the Google translate of the relevant comments. Problematic as they are (and I found references posted to them further up this thread of interest), Reuters appears to have taken the soldiers comment out of context:

I, like all post-war children, was brought up on patriotism: in memory of those who died during the Great Patriotic War and on hatred of Nazism. I am sincerely proud of the courage of our soldiers, who at all times defended their homeland and freedom.

We equally mourn for all the dead and injured in the hostilities that have been going on for 8 years. I thought and still think that wars are an absolute evil. The words of the song “Do Russians Want Wars” are full of great meaning for me. But the main thing is that a strong peace and a more just order will eventually be established on our planet, in which there is no place for either Nazism or the dominance of some countries over others.

Today, Russia continues to live under harsh but senseless sanctions. But we will rise to this challenge. We are ready to respond with technological breakthroughs and our own development. It has always been so.

So I think it is very telling...and yes, Putin has been accusing Ukraine if Nazism...while he is the one who is a fashist!

[Kevin Bonham]

The General Assembly approved a proposal to refer the matter of Russia and Belarus participation in teams events to a working group to examine IOC decisions and the legal situation carefully and report to FIDE Council. Two delegates spoke in favour of the GA recommending the ban be lifted but that did not proceed to a vote after the President discouraged passing such a motion

[Patrick Byrom]

... I think in the light of the fact that Dvorkovich is more than ''a Russian citizen'' and support he recieves from the Russian Government. ACF (along with other democratic nations) must be very open about its stand on this matter as should be other countries. Some of the countries that voted for Dvorkovich are countries where literally 99% of players/people are strongly opposed to any support of Kremlin in any shape or form.

This is why I would think it is important to be transparent about whom we vote for and ensure that the Australian vote represents the view of the chess community.

You mean 'represented', don't you - the election is over. And Australia's vote was clearly not decisive. So what difference does it make now how we voted?

And you should be careful of the logical fallacy that because Putin supports Dvorkovich, supporting Dvorkovich is therefore the same as supporting Putin.

[Kevin Bonham]

The Zone with the unresolved issue turns out to be us - looks like the Electoral Commission prefers that the Delegates vote again with all eight present (good luck with that) prior to going to a Continental vote. Hopefully the first not also on Christmas Day.

England's motion to change the membership rules to a country being a member of either the UN or the IOC to join (not both) was approved (Serbia against because of Kosovo). PNG's to back-apply this to existing federations wasted a lot of time and nobody agreed with them (literally). PNG's other motion got two votes. England's motion to tighten rules for who can be a Delegate to require citizenship/residency was withdrawn.

The matter of Elizabeth Paehtz, who was wrongly declared by mutiple FIDE officials to have obtained a GM norm that she needs for the title in an event in 2016, will be referred to the FIDE Council together with some other such cases to find a general approach re awarding or not awarding titles to players who are victims of FIDE errors that are not discovered promptly. (Suspect this ends with Paehtz becoming a GM but we'll see.)