ARE RUSSIA AND BELARUS NOT SUSPENDED FROM THE ICCF?

Russia and Belarus seem to have not been suspended from the international correspondence chess federation ICCF.

The ICCF Extraordinary Congress tried to suspend the Russian and Belarus federations.

Online voting was carried out from 27 April — 09 May 2022.

ICCF's homepage does not provide a clear result. I do not see it. The link to that Congress disappeared recently (and later, it is changing again!).

The downloadable table of the voting results does not show at once what country made what decision.

An excerpt from the results:

EC 2022-003 Suspend the Russian Federation — Void if EC 2022-001 is Defeated

For 33, Against 10, Abstain 14

I calculate that FOR: 58%.

EC 2022-01 — Amendment of ICCF Statute Article 17 — required 2/3 votes. The result was:

For 34, Against 10, Abstain 13

I calculate that FOR: 60%, which is less than the required 2/3 or 67%. 

Thus, it seems that the ICCF failed to change its Statute to allow the suspension of Russia and Belarus based on majority voting.

Unfortunately, in my homeland Estonia, there is no information available on how our representative voted (if he voted) and based on what considerations. 

The national federation has not officially responded to my question sent through the ICCF server. I also do not see any relevant news on the national federation's website.

However, English Federation for Correspondence Chess announces on its homepage (the author of the message is Phill Becket): 

"At the recent ICCF Extraordinary Congress the following motions were debated and passed;

- The Russian and Belarusian Federations are now suspended. (...)"

No references or links are provided. This announcement, however, does not fit with the calculations of percentages I made, based on the table provided by the ICCF homepage. 

However, the ICCF Statutes webpage provides a new Statute, valid from 9th May 2022. Article 17 contains a new sentence now: 

The Executive Board is empowered by Congress to propose suspension or dismissal of member federations for non-financial reasons. 

 

Thus, it seems that the ICCF Congress has calculated as follows:

34/(34 + 13) = 34/47 = 0.72 = 72%

It means that the "abstained" 13 voters have not been taken into account. But who voted how, who remained neutral, who was missing, etc.?

Article 12 says the following:

Amendments to the statutes require a vote of the general assembly, called the Congress, and a majority of two thirds of the members present or represented. 

However, that Extraordinary Congress was online. 

Finally, the downloadable table has other pages providing more detailed information. Thus, there is information that Estonian representative Jüri Kuusik did not "attend" the online congress. 

The meanings of the terms "present", "represented", "attended", and "abstained" have remained unclear, which makes the manipulations possible. 

Clarity is missing around that issue and on the ICCF homepage.