A discussion thread has been requested concerning the FIDE elections to be held at the FIDE Congress in Tromso, Norway in August 2014

The major item for discussion is the election for the presidency of FIDE. The two main candidate websites are at:

http://fidefirst.com/ for Kirsan Ilyumzhinov
http://kasparov2014.com/ for Garry Kasparov

Our FIDE Representative Hal Bond has indicated that he is going to be in Norway for the Congress.

So which way should Canada vote? First off a couple of key points:

- the Handbook makes it quite clear that the CFC's relations with FIDE is an Executive decision, not a decision of the Assembly. Obviously on this issue like any other issue, the Executive's stewardship of the CFC will be considered in voting for the new Executive.
- there was a spirited discussion on the Governors' Chat forum with a straw vote which was narrowly in favor of the Ilyumzhinov camp. To the Executive that said we don't have a clear consensus on the subject amongst the Governors / VMs
- before that there was an equally spirited discussion amongst the Executive and the consensus was that neither candidate was clearly superior to the point of the decision being a "no brainer", that neither campaign came to the table with "clean hands" and that there were charges and counter-charges. But we DO have to choose - "none of the above" is not a recipe for good governance of FIDE!
- the Executive decision was for Ilyumzhinov and no one who was party to the Executive discussion would say the vote was a ringing endorsement
- following that there was a Globe and Mail article which was clearly based primarily on information from Canadian Kasparov supporters

To reiterate, it may not seem this way but this issue has been talked out extensively by your Executive and it was one of the tougher decisions of the year. I wish it HAD been an easy decision since there are things that I (speaking personally) strongly dislike about the current state of things at FIDE. Again speaking personally I have wavered in my view and am offended with some of the rhetoric I've heard from the stalwarts on both sides.

OK - I've said enough for now, time for someone else to put in their $ 0.02 worth!