Karpov team strike back with threat of legal action

The Russian Chess Federation nomination has been at the center of the fight between Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and Anatoly Karpov for the Presidency of FIDE. The Karpov team has requested to see the documentation that Ilyumzhinov has submitted for his and his teams candidacy. They back this up with threats of legal recourse. If anyone doubts why I kept banging on about the Russian Chess Federation and the relevance of being nominated by "his" Federation then the actions of the Karpov team has removed this doubt.

One candidate was always going to be lacking the nomination of the Russian Chess Federation. Now Karpov is going into battle. He questions the impartiality of the FIDE Secretariat and the FIDE website, specifically in publishing the tickets with commentary. In addition there is one glaring difference between Karpov's submitted documents on his own site and that published by the FIDE website. Karpov names the Russian Chess Federation as nominating him.

This opens up all kinds of legal possablities. First the real documentation surrounding the Russian nomination will have to be taken into account With going head to head versions signed by Arkady Dvorkovich and the outgoing Alexander Bakh. Dvorkovich confirmed to FIDE that his version was the actual one to FIDE once he had ousted his opponents. This may be enough in law for the FIDE Secretariat, it may not be enough in law in Russia where it may have to be challenged, and there may be a third point of view in the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne where this dispute may eventualy end.

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Karpov also questions the legitimacy of some of the other nominations and many of the statements on the "One World, One Vision" website of Ilyumzhinov.

One thing that is clear in the campaign so far is that this is not a fight for the faint-hearted. It is a proper political fight, candidates are using the weaponry of propaganda, deal making and now eventualy the law. Campomanes and his successor Ilyumzhinov were both very fond of the motto of FIDE "Gens Una Sumus" (We are all one family) which was a code word for lets play nice and favoured the inertia of supporting the ruling "regime". All very well when you're winning election after election but those on the other side feel completely excluded from this so called family.

Karpov's strategy looks both imperative and a bit risky. Its doubtable could get Ilyumzhinov excluded from the elections if he completly in his objections, wouldn't rule it out, but highly doubt it, but the question is also how does his campaign stand if his objections are rejected?

It is interesting that Karpov feels he can turn the apparent complete victory of Ilyumzhinov's supporter Dvorkovich (and I think by now by extension fairly obviously the Russian Government) against him in the election. Dvorkovich has clearly made, from his own point of view, some really drastically bad errors, it will be interesting to see if his paperwork is in order.

The one thing that looks certain is that the disputes will end up in the Court for Arbitration in Sport .