The in­ter­na­tion­al chess world de­scend­ed in­to chaos and bit­ter ac­cu­sa­tions of cheat­ing yes­ter­day with the con­tro­ver­sial re-elec­tion of the pres­i­dent of the World Chess Fed­er­a­tion, who de­feat­ed the for­mer world chess cham­pi­on Ana­toly Kar­pov. Amid tu­mul­tuous scenes that saw del­e­gates shout abuse at each oth­er in an over­crowd­ed hall, the in­cum­bent Russ­ian can­di­date, Kir­san Ilyumzhi­nov, won the clear back­ing of a ma­jor­i­ty of the world's 160 chess fed­er­a­tions. He de­feat­ed Kar­pov, his fel­low-Russ­ian, by 95 votes to 65. The bal­lot re­con­firms Ilyumzhi­nov as the head of FIDE, the world chess body. But speak­ing from the scene of the vote, Kar­pov's sup­port­ers de­scribed the bal­lot as a "farce", and said Ilyumzhi­nov had used "in­tim­i­da­tion, bul­ly-boy tac­tics" and even "bla­tant cor­rup­tion" to steam­roll his way to vic­to­ry.

Kar­pov's wife, Na­talia, speak­ing from Moscow, de­scribed the re­sult as "aw­ful". "I haven't man­aged to get through to Ana­toly. But his aides told me it was like fight­ing in en­e­my ter­ri­to­ry. It was very dif­fi­cult to mon­i­tor the vote. The whole thing was a mess," she said.

Speak­ing from the Siber­ian city of Khan­ty-Man­siysk, where the bal­lot was held, CJ de Mooi, the pres­i­dent of the Eng­lish Chess Fed­er­a­tion, said: "It was un­be­liev­able. This was a farce of a vote. "You wouldn't be­lieve the bla­tant break­ing of rules and FIDE's writ­ten statutes. It's amaz­ing. There wasn't even a pre­tence of fair­ness and free speech." De Mooi said Ilyumzhi­nov, FIDE's pres­i­dent for 15 years, had re­fused to al­low Kar­pov's sup­port­ers to ad­dress the gen­er­al as­sem­bly meet­ing. In­stead, he turned off their mi­cro­phones and car­ried on speak­ing him­self. He al­so ig­nored le­gal points raised from the floor, even­tu­al­ly storm­ing off stage with FIDE's rul­ing board, de Mooi said.

The re­sult is a bit­ter re­ver­sal for Kar­pov, who had pledged to clean up world chess amid long-stand­ing ac­cu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion and mal­prac­tice un­der Ilyumzhi­nov's ec­cen­tric lead­er­ship. The Eng­lish, French, Ger­man, Swiss, and US chess fed­er­a­tions all backed Kar­pov–as did his one-time bit­ter chess ri­val, the world cham­pi­on-turned-op­po­si­tion politi­cian Gar­ry Kas­parov. Kar­pov's sup­port­ers point to wide­spread ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the vote, which saw up to 56 coun­tries vote by proxy, with Zam­bia vot­ing for Kenya, Chi­na for Bur­ma, the UAE for Kuwait, and so on. They al­so al­lege that sev­er­al del­e­gates may have been im­prop­er­ly in­flu­enced. The vote took place along­side FIDE's an­nu­al chess Olympiad. With world chess cur­rent­ly lack­ing a backer, he al­so want­ed to at­tract cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship. Kar­pov al­so in­tend­ed to open FIDE of­fices in Moscow, New York and Paris, thus bring­ing chess back to a big­ger au­di­ence. Ilyumzhi­nov de­nied there had been any im­pro­pri­ety on his watch, and said he had of­fered Kar­pov a role as his deputy–an of­fer the for­mer cham­pi­on is like­ly to refuse.