Fide polls divide NCFP leadership

MANILA, Philippines - Top officials of the National Chess Federation of the Philippines are on a collision course after its president Butch Pichay and secretary-general Bambol Tolentino back rival candidates in the coming FIDE elections this August.

Pichay has committed the NCFP’s nomination to Ignatius Leong, the FIDE general secretary who is running for former world champion Garry Kasparov’s ticket, while Tolentino is challenging Leong for the position in incumbent FIDE president Kirshan Illyumzhinov’s group.

Tolentino said he decided to run as answer to Illyumzhinov’s statement that the position was offered out of courtesy of the late Florencio Campomanes, the grand old man of Phl chess who endorsed Illyumzhinov when he assumed the presidency in 1995.

“It was given to the Phl as a moral obligation to the late Campomanes, whether or not endorsed or to be voted by the NCFP,” Tolentino yesterday told The STAR.

But Tolentino denied there’s a issue between him and Pichay.

“No friction, this was tackled in the board meeting last week,” he said.

Reports, however, pointed to that of a May 5 NCFP board resolution, naming Pichay as the country’s official delegate to FIDE and ruling out a purported earlier decision last April 30 naming Tolentino as the country’s delegate.

A total of 56 national federations – 22 from Africa, 18 from the Americas, nine from Asia and seven from Europe – nominated Illyumzhinov while 20 countries went for Kasparov – eight from Asia, including the Philippings, five each from Africa and Europe and two from the Americas including the United States.

Illyumzhinov is seeking his fourth term after winning via landslide votes over challengers Jaime Sunye Neto, Bessel Kok and another former world champion Anatoly Karpov. Kasparov, on the other hand, is trying to unseat the former and institute changes.

Curiously, Kasparov is running for a position in the same federation he rebelled against by defecting from FIDE in 1996 to form his own organization.