Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has just been re-elected as the next FIDE president again. He's so far beaten two World Chess Champions in the elections - Karpov and Kasparov, both by some absolutely big margins.
What is his claim to (chess) fame?" What do people like about him to give him so much power? He's the real king in chess, the most powerful chess personnel in the world and dominating the chess scene.
I thought that Nigel Short summed it up pretty well here: http://www.chess.com/news/breaking-ilyumzhinov-beats-kasparov-110-61-at-fide-presidential-elections-4528
"There's nothing wrong with chess players. If you ask in the playing hall, I'll bet 9 out of 10 will vote for Kasparov. The problem is: delegates. If the delegate has received an incentive to vote in a particular way, it doesn't matter whatever reason or logic is presented to him."
Basically, many delegates voting for Ilyumzhinov received some strong form of compensation to do so. He consistently wins because he has money (much of which he gained while ruling Kalmykia) and has zero moral compunctions about how he uses it.
To me personally, Kirsan is the lesser devil of the two. Kasparov, as great a player as he was(greatest in my opinion), is a very volatile person and he's fighting Putin which occupies a majority of his time. He doesn't have the administrative qualities to lead a world chess organization and personality doesn't necessarily get you the FIDE president-ship. That said, 19 years of Kirsan has been a lot to take and maybe the time was right for a change. Maybe someone apart from Garry. Kirsan did do some good things to Chess, advocating introducing chess at schools and as I understand he was extremely successful in the republic state he governed. Dude is highly eccentric, though, with the 'alleged' abduction by Aliens.
Without getting into the pros and cons of either candidate or, more to the point, the cons of the incumbant, there might still be some value in reading this account of the FIDE presidential election.
The author, Kevin Bonham, is the delegate of the Australian Chess Federation and he's quite open about the attempts to sway his vote through bribery. He took the gifts, but it changed nothing because the decision was made prior to his departing for Tromsø (the ACF backed the Kasparov campaign much earlier in the year; I believe the ACF vote was held shortly after Kasparov visited Australia in April). Anyway, Kevin is a psephologist so he spends his working life studying the conduct and outcome of elections, which adds a slightly different dimension to accounts of this type of election. He is quite right in his comparison of the FIDE elections to those of the UN, except at the UN the bribing is generally of whole countries or the leadership of those countries, rather than of the ambassadors those countries send to the UN.
