FIDE Presidential Elections Now Officially 3-Horse Race
It's official: the FIDE presidential elections will be a three-horse race between Arkady Dvorkovich, Georgios Makropoulos and Nigel Short. "Makro" presented his ticket with a surprisingly high number of supporting federations: 64.
After yesterday's deadline of 3 July 2018, 17:00 (Athens time), exactly three months before the elections, the three FIDE presidential candidates and their tickets were presented today on the FIDE website.
We give the information below as well—like FIDE, alphabetically:
a) Nominated by 13 national federations, the presidential ticket of Arkady Dvorkovich:
Arkady Dvorkovich (Russia) – President
Bachar Kouatly (France) – Deputy President
Sewa Enyonam Fumey (Togo) – General Secretary
Mahir Mammedov (Azerbaijan) – Vice President
Julio Granda Zuniga (Peru) – Vice President
Zhu Chen (Qatar) – Treasurer
The national chess federations that nominated Dvorkovich's ticket are Ghana, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia, Nicaragua, Iraq, Mongolia, Qatar, Azerbaijan, Belarus, France, Moldova and Russia.
b) Nominated by 64 national federations, the presidential ticket of Georgios Makropoulos:
Georgios Makropoulos (Greece) – President
Malcolm Pein (England) – Deputy President
Sundar Damal Villivalam (India) – General Secretary
Martha Fierro (Ecuador) – Vice President
Chitalu Chilufya (Zambia) – Vice President
Adrian M. Siegel (Switzerland) – Treasurer
The national chess federations that nominated Makropoulos’ ticket are Algeria, Comoros Islands, Congo, Egypt, Gabon, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Mauritania, Senegal, Swaziland, Zambia, Argentina, Aruba, Barbados, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Netherlands Antilles, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, US Virgin Islands, Bangladesh, Guam, Hong Kong, India, Laos, Maldives, Nauru, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Andorra, Cyprus, Former Yug. Rep. of Macedonia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guernsey, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Romania, San Marino, Scotland, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland.
c) Nominated by six national federations, the presidential ticket of Nigel Short:
Nigel Short (England) – President
Lukasz Marek Turlej (Poland) – Deputy President
Ruth Haring (USA) – General Secretary
Olalekan Adeyemi (Nigeria) – Vice President
Paul Spiller (New Zealand) – Vice President
Panu Laine (Finland) – Treasurer
The national chess federations that nominated Short’s ticket are Nigeria, USA, New Zealand, England, Finland, Poland.
(See the FIDE website for information on the candidates for the continental presidential elections, which is beyond the scope of this article.)
The official tickets above are in line with earlier information that was given by the three candidates. The only surprise is the high number of federations nominating Makropoulos' ticket, taking into account that each ticket needs a minimum of only five federations supporting.
It's important to note that nominations in itself say nothing about the final results; only the actual voting on October 3 in Batumi will determine the winner. So, what is the meaning of Makro having presented his ticket with 64 backing federations?
It mostly shows the excellent connections he has with a large number of federations, built up over a long period of time. Traditionally, the current FIDE leadership—formerly run by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov— has had tremendous support from the Americas, where Makropoulos' ally Jorge Vega is the continental president.
Silvio Danailov, a former Bulgarian Chess Federation president and a known adversary of Makropoulos, has his own explanation: Makro wanted to show his muscles.
Let me explain something to all naive @makro_chess supporters.64 papers doesn’t mean 64 votes, capisci ? Poor guy is trying to show muscles and confidence to sell himself better cos he know he will lose & be dead after elections.Simple as that https://t.co/lipX03Ja5k pic.twitter.com/cWuNAI7ZVd
— Silvio Danailov (@SilvioDanailov) July 4, 2018
FIDE currently unites 189 member federations. Even if all aforementioned federations stick to their nominations (which isn't certain at all), there are still many more votes to fight for.
The three candidates have three months left for campaigning. Without taking a stance in the actual elections, Chess.com can only support Short's suggestion of a public debate between the three, somewhere in the coming months.
Now we, at last, officially know who is running, I invite the other two candidates in the #FIDE Presidential Elections @advorkovich & @makro_chess for a public debate. #cleanhands4fide
— Nigel Short (@nigelshortchess) July 4, 2018
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
Peter's first book The Chess Revolution is out now!
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