The Movement of New Forces party led by former President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili has been denied registration for the upcoming snap parliamentary elections.
On June 23, the Central Election Commission (CEC) refused to register the party’s candidate list and also denied registration to Movement of New Forces candidates planning to run in single-member districts.
In the Ukrainian electoral system, half of the lawmakers are elected from nationwide party lists, while the other half are elected individually in single-member districts.
According to the CEC, Saakashvili’s party lied about the date of its convention. The commission says that the documents it received stated that the party declared its intention to run in the snap vote during its convention on May 8.
However, President Volodymyr Zelensky dispersed parliament and called for an early election on May 21, during his inauguration speech. The actual date of the election was only set a few days later. As a result, on May 8 Saakashvili and his party could not have known there would be snap elections.
In a Facebook post, Saakashvili blamed former President Petro Poroshenko for the CEC decision, claiming he controls the commission. In a later comment, Saakashvili said he has the best lawyers and plans to appeal the decision in court.
The past month has been eventful for the former Georgian president, who also served as governor of Ukraine’s Odesa Oblast in 2015-2016. On May 28, Zelensky restored Saakashivili’s Ukrainian citizenship, after Poroshenko cancelled it in 2017. The next day, Saakashvili returned to Ukraine.
On June 21, a Kyiv district court allowed Saakashvili to run for parliament, officially concluding that his candidacy did not violate a law requiring candidates to reside in Ukraine for five years before the election. In fact, Saakashvili was absent from the country for over a year, due to a three-year entry ban imposed on him for illegally crossing the Ukrainian border back in 2018.
The official deadline to register candidates in the upcoming snap parliamentary election was June 21.
