Honourable Voting Members:
In 1990-s, the Chess Federation of Canada has a physical office, a chess store, the En Passant magazine. While other federations strengthened and prospered, ours became poorer and poorer. Out biggest friend and ally, the United States, has a professional, well-run machine of the USCF with dozens of employees and hundreds of volunteers, with a reach in all 50 states, with professional managers, departments and commissions. This attracts sponsors who contribute millions of dollars to U.S. chess. Rex Sinquefild, Webster University, others.
It is within our reach to transform the CFC into the same kind of a united, modern, professional sports federation. Thousands of Canadian chess lovers – and everyone of you – will benefit from new opportunities and sustained prosperity.
For three weeks in a row, I have constructively and patiently described the blueprints for this transformation. I informed you about the FIDE structure, its logistics, the new financing model for the member federations. I was privileged to meet with so many of you in groups or one-on-one, and to learn your concerns. I have posted nine significant sections of my program, identifying several crucial and urgent issues facing the CFC on the world stage, and offered ways to address them. I expected a fruitful professional discussion regarding these issues – and I am very grateful to the huge majority of you, from Charlottetown to Victoria, who engaged in such a discussion with me. - In private.
What happened in the public square? No other candidate ever addressed the policy issues identified, or showed even slightest understanding of the urgency to find solutions to several of them. No other candidate ever offered their own views, or discussed the merits of my program. None of them was, or is, ready to discuss the substance with me.
On the opposite, the other candidates’ surrogates resorted to ad hominem attacks and threw at Vadim everything but the kitchen sink, hoping that something would stick. They started with vile offensive insults that were universally denounced by you, the honourable Voting Members. They finished with libelous attempts to smear my wife’s good name. You, the honourable Voting Members, forcefully rejected those as well. Regrettably, none of the other candidates themselves joined the voice of the Canadian chess community in rejecting those attacks. I leave for all of you to ponder what this means.
Thank you, dear colleagues, for making your own informed judgment.
So, what is left for my opponents now? Again and again, they refuse to discuss platform issues, they refuse to recognize the challenges facing the CFC in the modern chess world, they refuse any intelligent debate, they spin tall tales or advance patented untruths. The only “argument” they are advancing nowadays is a snake oil’s salesman “two-for-the-price-of-one” pitch:
The answer to Lloyd’s question # 2 is logical and straightforward. As an executive of the International Chess Federation, I am always happy to work together with a delegate of any national federation. If the CFC Voting Members decide that it is preferable for the CFC to have Vadim Tsypin concentrate solely on his current responsibilities as the Secretary of the FIDE Management Board and to entrust someone else with a position of Canada’s FIDE delegate, then I will of course accept the Voting Members’ decision. I would thereupon concentrate on my FIDE responsibilities. As a FIDE executive, I deal with delegates from 195 countries. If Mr. Plotkin were elected, I would definitely provide him the same amount of time and the same amount of support as I am providing to any of those 195 colleagues.Vadim Tsypin can successfully continue supporting Canadian chess just as he has done until now, holding a very honorable (paid) position at FIDE. In such an outcome, Canada will only benefit, as essentially it will have two representatives in FIDE instead of one.