Georgian ex-President Saakashvili’s party receives 0.4% of votes in Ukraine’s snap elections

Georgian former President Mikheil Saakashvili’s Movement of New Forces has received 0.4 per cent of votes in Ukraine’s snap parliamentary elections held yesterday, called by a new President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky back in May.

Preliminary results of the Ukrainian Central Election Commission read that Zelensky’s Servant of the People party received 42 per cent of votes in the race, which is the highest score in a parliamentary election for any party since Ukraine gained its independence after the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991.

Pro-Russian party - Opposition Platform for Life - secured 12 per cent of the vote, with whom Zelensky excludes any possibility of cooperation to form a government.

Former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko's party, European Solidarity, won 8.64 per cent of votes, while Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna – 8.33 per cent.

Before the elections took place Saakashvili urged his supporters to vote for Zelensky's party in the party-list race, while support the majoritarian candidates of the Movement of New Forces in the majoritarian race. 

On May 28, 2019, Zelensky restored Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship of which he was stripped by his former ally Poroshenko in 2017, after Saakashvili went into the opposition.

Saakashvili says that Zelensky is in need of his help to defeat corruption and meet the promises he had given to his voters.

Read more about Saakashvili here.