Arkady Dvorkovich Elected FIDE President
103 delegates support his candidature.
The General Assembly of the 89th FIDE Congress began its work in Batumi, Georgia, on October 3. The key point of the first working day’s agenda was FIDE Presidential election. Initially, there were three candidates for the position: Georgios Makropoulos (Greece), Nigel Short (England), and Arkady Dvorkovich (Russia). During his speech, Nigel Short withdrew his candidature and endorsed Arkady Dvorkovich.
According to the FIDE Statute, a new President is elected for 4 years by a direct secret ballot procedure. Each country affiliated to FIDE has only one vote; a candidate has to get more than 50% of votes to win in the first round. As a result, Georgios Makropoulos got 78 votes, 103 delegates voted in favour of Arkady Dvorkovich, while one ballot was declared invalid. Thus, Arkady Dvorkovich has become a new, seventh FIDE President.
Having won the election, Arkady Dvorkovich gave comment to the press:
- We won. We have a great team which was fighting to the end during this short, but tough campaign and now we can do what we have promised to: to turn FIDE into a respected, trustworthy organization and get chess out of the woods.
Unfortunately, we will have to start with bureaucratic procedure: to appoint Vice-Presidents, chairpersons and members of Commissions officially. A structure which will work on should be formed. I hope that tomorrow we will be able to suggest first changes, which were expressed today in speeches, and that these changes will contribute to transparency and efficient work. And then a tense work will be done month by month.
I am grateful to all of you for the trust; everyone has done one's best doing one's work. In general, I am very satisfied with such a result because I thought that the edge would be less.
Members of the Presidential Ticket of Arkady Dvorkovich are elected into office:
Bachar Kouatly – Deputy President
Sewa Enyonam Fumey – General Secretary
Mahir Mammedov – Vice President
Julio Granda Zuniga – Vice President
Zhu Chen – Treasurer.
The Russian Chess Federation congratulates Arkady Dvorkovich on becoming FIDE President and wishes him success in developing and promoting chess in the whole world!
