Carl Ja­cobs

Sud­den­ly, in the midst of a bit­ter cam­paign for the pres­i­den­cy of the World Chess Fed­er­a­tion (FIDE), some­thing weird, if not fun­ny, has hap­pened. The in­cum­bent, Kir­san Ilyumzhi­nov, who is bat­tling to re­tain the of­fice he has held for the last 15 years, claims that he was kid­napped by aliens at his home in Moscow 13 years ago. Save your laugh­ter, dear read­er, the man is dead­ly se­ri­ous.

Ilyumzhi­nov, who is al­so Pres­i­dent of the Russ­ian re­pub­lic of Kalmykia, re­called the ex­tra­or­di­nary events dur­ing an in­ter­view on Russ­ian state tele­vi­sion about three weeks ago. The wealthy politi­cian said he was re­lax­ing at his Moscow apart­ment when he heard his bal­cony door be­ing opened and some­one call­ing him.

"I went there and looked. There was a se­mi-trans­par­ent pipe. I went in­to this pipe and saw peo­ple in yel­low space­suits."

The FIDE Pres­i­dent's amaz­ing sto­ry was high­light­ed in a num­ber of lead­ing news­pa­pers in Rus­sia and the de­vel­oped world. The Dai­ly Tele­graph of Lon­don re­port­ed that Ilyumzhi­nov re­count­ed the episode "with no ap­par­ent sign of irony, adding that the aliens ex­plained that they were col­lect­ing sam­ples." The Russ­ian politi­cian is quot­ed as say­ing that he him­self would prob­a­bly not have be­lieved the alien vis­i­ta­tion if there had not been three wit­ness­es, "these were my dri­ver, a min­is­ter and my as­sis­tant." Ac­cord­ing to the Tele­graph, "the ec­cen­tric politi­cian has made sim­i­lar claims be­fore but his re­peat­ing them on prime time state TV at a time when he is stand­ing for re-elec­tion as Pres­i­dent of FIDE has caused con­ster­na­tion."

Ilyumzhi­nov, 48, a mul­ti­mil­lion­aire busi­ness­man, told his Russ­ian TV talk show hosts, "I am of­ten asked which lan­guage I used to talk to them. Per­haps it was on a lev­el of the ex­change of ideas."

In an ear­li­er in­ter­view with The Guardian of Lon­don, the chess boss re­called that the aliens had tak­en him to "some kind of star." He added: "They put a space­suit on me, told me many things and showed me around. They want­ed to demon­strate that UFOs do ex­ist."

The sto­ry be­comes more in­trigu­ing, if not more hi­lar­i­ous, when The Times re­port­ed that Ilyumzhi­nov's Russ­ian po­lit­i­cal peers sud­den­ly be­came quite ag­i­tat­ed over the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Kalmykia pres­i­dent may have let slip state se­crets to his ab­duc­tors and whether Moscow had prop­er pro­ce­dures for deal­ing with aliens.

An­drei Lebe­dev, a State Du­ma deputy, was ap­par­ent­ly moved by the "holy ter­ror" of Ilyumzhi­nov's claims and re­cent­ly wrote to Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Dmit­ry Medmedev ask­ing him to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Ilyumzhi­nov, The Times ob­served, is no stranger to con­tro­ver­sy. In 1993, then aged 30, he was elect­ed to the top po­lit­i­cal post in Kalmykia, pledg­ing to give Kalmykian shep­herds a mo­bile phone and US$100 each.

His crit­ics ac­cuse him of act­ing as a dic­ta­tor of both the im­pov­er­ished Kalmykia re­pub­lic and the World Chess Fed­er­a­tion. What the FIDE boss hopes to achieve by his oth­er-worldy recita­tion is as mys­te­ri­ous as the tale it­self. What ef­fect it will have on his ef­fort to turn back the strong chal­lenge of for­mer world chess cham­pi­on Ana­toly Kar­pov will even­tu­al­ly be re­vealed at the FIDE Gen­er­al As­sem­bly on Sep­tem­ber 24 when some 143 del­e­gates rep­re­sent­ing mem­ber fed­er­a­tions will cast their vote to elect the next pres­i­dent. The Con­gress, at which ma­jor ad­min­is­tra­tive de­ci­sions are tak­en, co­in­cides with the bi­en­ni­al Chess Olympiad which, this year, will be held in the Russ­ian city of Khan­ty Man­siysk next Sep­tem­ber.

How Trinidad and To­ba­go will vote in this con­test is a mat­ter for the T&T Chess As­so­ci­a­tion to de­cide, and one ex­pects that its mem­bers are close­ly fol­low­ing the twists and turns of the cam­paign which is pro­duc­ing its own cu­ri­ous, caus­tic and con­vo­lut­ed episodes. When asked about it, As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Quintin Cabralis said T&T's vote will re­sult from an open de­bate at the T&TCA an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing on June 13. "We must be con­cerned about the fu­ture of the sport we love and, as a re­sult, we have got to be clear as to what each can­di­date has to of­fer," he added. Me­dia re­ports that Kar­pov has ac­tu­al­ly been nom­i­nat­ed by the Russ­ian Chess Fed­er­a­tion are ve­he­ment­ly de­nied by the Ilyumzhi­nov camp. How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to for­mer world cham­pi­on Gar­ry Kas­parov, who is back­ing his old ri­val for the top FIDE post, a to­tal of 21 coun­tries, in­clud­ing the USA and sev­er­al Eu­ro­pean states, have al­ready de­clared their sup­port for Kar­pov.

Kas­parov makes his case large­ly by rail­ing against the de­cline of Russ­ian chess un­der Ilyumzhi­nov's pres­i­den­cy. The T&TCA, how­ev­er, must be con­vinced that a change to Kar­pov is like­ly to ben­e­fit the sport as a whole, par­tic­u­lar­ly small de­vel­op­ing coun­tries such as ours.