MPH: Mark Hughes on...

You may have noticed that things have recently gone very quiet on the Max Mosley front, pending the FIA's Extraordinary General Meeting on June 3, ostensibly to discuss matters arising from elements of his private life being made public. But be assured there is an awful lot of activity beneath the surface.

Max is fighting tooth and nail for his career, using his political adroitness to amazing effect, helped by some ostensibly rather eccentric FIA statutes. The governing body's processes make dull reading, but in understanding their essence you quickly appreciate that in the midst of this battle there is no requirement to fight fair, only legal. Legal and fair are not necessarily the same thing, as any politician will tell you.

Two things should be made clear about the EGM: 1) It was Max who called it, Max who decided its date - and largely Max who decided what it would entail. 2) The vote of confidence on the agenda currently has no follow-up motion. So even if the vote goes against him, there is nothing in that motion that allows for any further action to be taken. Because it was Max who outlined the motion.

watch the rabbit, not the hands He's able to do this because he's not being 'tried', for he has not committed any crime in the wider legal sense. Just as it wouldn't be a crime for a driver to jump the start, or run with traction control. It would only be 'illegal' within the agreed sporting code.

But it could be argued that under the sport's own covenants Max is bringing the sport into disrepute by staying on even after the News of the World published its revelations, a charge he has used to take actions against others in the past. But no one has charged him with this. Why? Possibly because they've been distracted by the idea of the EGM holding him to account, a notion that's not necessarily an accurate one.

A cynic might say he chose to set up the EGM for precisely the purpose of reducing the chances of a disrepute charge being made against him, using it as a decoy. Like a magician, he's extremely adroit at inducing you to watch the rabbit and not the hands.

Another reason for the absence of such a charge might be that it would have to come from within the organisation he presides over - and so any would-be accusers might feel vulnerable in the aftermath of Max successfully refuting such a charge. Besides which, the statutes aren't clear on whether 'offences' that can be used against participants can also be levelled at the president. Which leaves the process open to accusations of hypocrisy, of course.

Would a driver or team owner have been charged with bringing the sport into disrepute had they been similarly exposed? Maybe not. But their actions surely do not carry as much weight as those of the president of the sport.

The timing of the meeting will have given Max nine weeks to prepare his case and to lobby internal support. Note, this is all internal. It's all very well for BMW, Honda, Mercedes and Toyota to issue strong statements against him continuing in his role. But they have no voting power within the structure that governs their participation in the sport. That power is deployed by a small number of (democratically elected) representatives. But they are voting to an agenda set in this instance by the person about whom they are voting!

Then there's the matter of how the votes are tallied: the statutes say anyone who fails to turn up will be counted as a vote of confidence. Presumably the justification would be that if the representative couldn't be bothered to vote, then he can't have very strong views about changing anything and therefore it must be assumed he's in favour of retaining the status quo. No matter how much you might argue that it would be more logical for a 'no-vote' to mean exactly that - neither in favour nor against - it's irrelevant. This is just how the statutes are set up.

The principle of a no-vote counting in Max's favour helped prevent an attempt at getting an addition made to the EGM that would have allowed for action to be taken should there be a vote of no-confidence. This attempt was made by one of Max's long-time opponents within the governing body, Jacques Regis. Although 18 voted that there should be such an amendment to the meeting versus 14 against, it wasn't enough. Because the statutes require an absolute majority for a motion to be carried. And 14 plus the no-votes adds up to more than 18.

the really interesting part Because of some further arcane point of legislation, it is still possible that amendments could be made to the EGM agenda and still possible therefore that there could be action taken should Max lose the vote. But this is not certain. Even this is a point of legalese.

As can be seen, the odds are stacked in Max's favour. Those who oppose him appear not to have his familiarity with the process, nor the favour of the political system they are operating in. The way the initial attempt at an amendment was lost may have alerted them to the scale of the challenge. If they then fail in their quest to remove the president from office, the really interesting part will be what happens if and when Max wins the vote.