Chess grandmasters as political heavyweights

I WAS shooting the breeze with Philippine Chess Federation president Prospero “Butch” Pichay Jr. on Monday when I abruptly turned his attention to Grandmaster Gary Kasparov, a known radical against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In Russia, chess is not only the national pastime; it is a religion, unlike in the United States where it is not even considered a sport.

Against this backdrop, Pichay noted that the mental game and its luminaries led by Kasparov, a world champion at 22 and considered the greatest chess player of all time, make for not only an influential, but a formidable force in Russian politics.

Kasparov is a Russian national hero who could sway the thinking of the masses. He has become a perpetual pest to Putin, who has responded by sending the GM to jail several times for the public expression of his disgust for the President’s heavy-handed style of governance.

I met Pichay through a mutual friend, Serafin Letim, his fellow Surigaonon. Serafin’s farm in Sacramento, California, is my weekend retreat when my wife and I return to California’s capital for long visits with our children.

After the pleasantries, our banter always turns to politics. But in our chat days ago, Pichay, a former Surigao congressman, tried to pivot away from my political line of thought. As he steered clear, he observed that in the country, chess and politics don’t mix. Not yet, anyway.

For 47 years, the Philippines only produced five GMs, including Asia’s first, the durable Eugene Torre. Since assuming the PCF presidency in 2007, Butch has seen that number rise to 17, three of them so-called super GMs.

So why is a collection of intelligent thinkers all in one place, with their high-profile media presence, and the legions of chess players and followers coy about a role in nation building? Why is this brainy bunch not trying to help introduce government reforms?

There may be budding Kasparovs in our midst, but only time can tell when and how they’d perceive their clout with chess citizens, according to Pichay.

“I am still working to make chess in the Philippines a religion,” Butch deadpanned.

Kasparov has thrown his support to a punk rock band made up of women and called by the indecent name “Pussy Riot.”

Members of the band, formed during Russia’s “Arab Spring,” a protest movement while Putin was up for reelection, were arrested after they shocked Russia’s oldest Orthodox church. They made the church their stage for a profanity-laced punk rock performance that scored Putin’s repressive presidency.

After what Kasparov termed a sham trial, two of the Pussy Riot were sent to prison camps, two are in hiding and one has come out, openly advocating the Russian government’s overthrow by peaceful means.

Kasparov said that the band’s actions were not “blasphemous, but courageous” and that the government’s response was an overreaction. Any protest action, however innocuous, is now considered a threat to Putin, Kasparov told CBS News recently.

A Russian official countered that the government is concerned about how Russia is being perceived by the rest of the world. The fallout has resulted in problems with travel and investments for the country, he told news reporters.