Parliamentary elections were held in

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

on 21 July 2019. Originally scheduled to be held at the end of October, the elections were brought forward after newly inaugurated

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television *'' Præsident ...

Volodymyr Zelenskyy Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy (born 25 January 1978) is a Ukrainian politician and former entertainer who has served as the sixth and current president of Ukraine since 2019. He took office five years after the start of the Russo-Ukraini ...

dissolved parliament on 21 May 2019, during his inauguration. The elections resulted in an outright majority, a novelty in Ukraine, for Zelenskyy's

Servant of the People Servant of the People (; ''SN'') is a Liberalism, liberal, Centrism, centrist, Pro-Europeanism, pro-European List of political parties in Ukraine, political party in Ukraine. Since both the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election and the 2019 Ukra ...

party, which won 254 seats. About 80 percent of the elected candidates were new to parliament, while 83 deputies were re-elected from the previous parliament and 13 deputies from earlier convocations. All deputies from Servant of the People were political newcomers. 61 percent of the new MPs had never before been engaged in politics. The elections were suspended in 26 of the 225 constituencies due to the March 2014 annexation of

Crimea Crimea ( ) is a peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukrain ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

and the ongoing occupation of parts of

Donetsk Oblast Donetsk Oblast, also referred to as Donechchyna (, ), is an Oblasts of Ukraine, oblast in eastern Ukraine. It is Ukraine's most populous province, with around 4.1 million residents. Its capital city, administrative centre is Donetsk, though d ...

and

Luhansk Oblast Luhansk Oblast (; ), also referred to as Luhanshchyna (), is the easternmost Administrative divisions of Ukraine, oblast (province) of Ukraine. Its administrative center is the city of Luhansk. The oblast was established in 1938 and bore the n ...

by separatist forces of the self-declared

Donetsk People's Republic The Donetsk People's Republic (DPR; , ) is Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, occupied territory in Ukraine that the Russian Federation has claimed to annex and declared as a Republics of Russia, republic of Russia, comprising parts o ...

and

Luhansk People's Republic The Luhansk People's Republic (LPR; , ) is a disputed territory administered as a republic of Russia in the occupied parts of eastern Ukraine's Luhansk Oblast, with its capital in Luhansk. The LPR was proclaimed by Russian-backed paramilitar ...

( since April 2014).

Background

Originally scheduled to be held at the end of October 2019, the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary elections were brought forward after newly inaugurated

dissolved parliament early on 21 May 2019 (a day after his inauguration), despite claims that he did not have the legal grounds to do this. After Zelenskyy issued the decree (calling early elections), a lawsuit was filed to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, which sought to declare the decree unconstitutional and therefore illegal. The court declared the decree to be legal on 20 June 2019. The official reason why Zelenskyy dissolved parliament was "a lack of a government coalition". Following the 2014 parliamentary elections, the Petro Poroshenko Bloc (PPB) party became the largest party, after securing 132 seats. On 21 November 2014, the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, People's Front, Self Reliance, Fatherland and the Radical Party all signed a coalition agreement.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk Arseniy Petrovych Yatsenyuk (born 22 May 1974) is a Ukrainian politician, economist and lawyer who served two terms as Prime Minister of Ukraine – from 27 February 2014 to 27 November 2014 and from 27 November 2014 to 14 April 2016. He was t ...

became

Prime Minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...

on 2 December 2014. The Radical Party left the coalition on 1 September 2015 in protest over a vote in parliament involving a change to the Ukrainian Constitution that would lead to decentralization and greater powers for areas held by separatists. February 2016 saw the start of the fall of the Yatsenyuk cabinet after the economy minister Aivaras Abromavičius announced his resignation claiming the government did not have real commitment to fight corruption. On 17 and 18 February 2016, the Fatherland and Self Reliance parties left the coalition; meaning that the coalition became 5 deputies short of the 226 needed. On 14 April 2016,

Volodymyr Groysman Volodymyr Borysovych Groysman (; born 20 January 1978) is a Ukrainian statesman, politician, and businessman. He served as the 16th Prime Minister of Ukraine from 14 April 2016, to 29 August 2019. From 2006 to 2014, he was the mayor of Vinny ...

became the new Prime Minister and the Groysman government began with a new cabinet of ministers. Due to the short period of time available to organize the 2019 parliamentary election, current Ukrainian public procurement laws were not followed and to bypass this, local election commissions will work under deferred payment.

Electoral system

Volodymyr Zelensky 2019 presidential inauguration 05

Under current law 225 members of the Verkhovna Rada are elected by nationwide closed

party-list proportional representation Party-list proportional representation (list-PR) is a system of proportional representation based on preregistered Political party, political parties, with each party being Apportionment (politics), allocated a certain number of seats Apportionm ...

with 5% electoral

election threshold The electoral threshold, or election threshold, is the minimum share of votes that a candidate or political party requires before they become entitled to representation or additional seats in a legislature. This limit can operate in various w ...

and the other 225 seats elected in

constituencies An electoral (congressional, legislative, etc.) district, sometimes called a constituency, riding, or ward, is a geographical portion of a political unit, such as a country, state or province, city, or administrative region, created to provi ...

with a

first-past-the-post electoral system First-past-the-post (FPTP)—also called choose-one, first-preference plurality (FPP), or simply plurality—is a single-winner voting rule. Voters mark one candidate as their favorite, or first-preference, and the candidate with more first- ...

in one round (candidate with the highest vote total wins). 21 parties take part in the election in the nationwide party-list. For the elections there was established a state financing for all political parties that received 2% support, but on 2 October 2019 that law was canceled. Out of 225 constituencies, 26 were suspended due to the March 2014 annexation of

and the occupation of parts of

and

by separatists ( since April 2014). Candidates had until 20 June to submit documents to the

Central Election Commission of Ukraine The Central Election Commission of Ukraine (, commonly abbreviated as , ); sometimes referred to as the Central Electoral Commission of Ukraine) is a permanent and independent collegiate body of the Ukrainian state that acts on the basis of th ...

to register as candidates for the position of deputy of the Verkhovna Rada. On 25 June 2019, the Central Election Commission ended its registration process. It registered 5,845 candidates for the elections: 3,171 candidates in the single-member constituencies and 2,674 candidates in the single nationwide constituency with 22 parties. Since 2014, various politicians have proposed to reform the electoral system to 100% party-list proportional representation with open lists. President Zelenskyy is the main proponent. The proposal is opposed by

Yulia Tymoshenko Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko ( Hrihyan born 27 November 1960) is a Ukrainian politician, who served as Prime Minister of Ukraine in 2005, and again from 2007 until 2010; the first and only woman in Ukraine to hold that position. She has been ...

. A vote on the proposal (authored by the president) was supposed to take place on 22 May 2019, but members of parliament voted against including it in the agenda.

Contesting parties

List of registered parties * Opposition Bloc ( Evgeny Muraev) * Strength and Honor ( Ihor Smeshko) *

Fatherland A homeland is a place where a national or ethnic identity has formed. The definition can also mean simply one's country of birth. When used as a proper noun, the Homeland, as well as its equivalents in other languages, often has ethnic nation ...

(

) * Patriot (Mykola Holomsha) * Power of the People (Oleksandr Solotai) * Opposition Platform — For Life ( Yuriy Boyko / Vadim Rabinovich) *

Party of Greens of Ukraine The Party of Greens of Ukraine (, PZU) is a Ukrainian green political party founded in 1990 by Yuriy Shcherbak and registered in May 1991. The party is a successor of the Green World Association (founded December 1987) and under that name p ...

(Tetyana Bodun) * Torch (Tetyana Odnoroh) * Self Reliance (

Andriy Sadovyi Andriy Ivanovych Sadovyi (; born 19 August 1968) is a Ukrainian politician and businessman who has served as the mayor of Lviv, the administrative centre of the Lviv Oblast of western Ukraine, since 2006. He is the former leader of the Self Re ...

) * European Solidarity (

Petro Poroshenko Petro Oleksiiovych Poroshenko (born 26 September 1965) is a Ukraine, Ukrainian politician and Oligarchy, oligarch who served as the fifth president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019. He served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs (Ukraine), Minister ...

) * Ukrainian Strategy of Groysman (

) * Civil Position ( Anatoliy Hrytsenko) * Social Justice (Alla Shlapak) *

( Dmytro Razumkov) * Power of the Law (formerly

Hope Hope is an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one's own life, or the world at large. As a verb, Merriam-Webster defines ''hope'' as "to expect with confid ...

) (Andriy Senchenko) * Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko ( Oleh Lyashko) * Party of Shariy ( Anatoly Shariy) *

Voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound produ ...

( Svyatoslav Vakarchuk) * Independence ( Anatolii Mohyliov) * Agrarian Party of Ukraine (Mykhailo Poplavskyi) *

Freedom Freedom is the power or right to speak, act, and change as one wants without hindrance or restraint. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving oneself one's own laws". In one definition, something is "free" i ...

( Oleh Tyahnybok) * Movement of New Forces (

Mikheil Saakashvili Mikheil "Misha" Saakashvili (born 21 December 1967) is a Georgian and Ukrainian politician and jurist. He was the third president of Georgia for two consecutive terms from 25 January 2004 to 17 November 2013. He is the founder and former chair ...

)

Opinion polls

Results

The 46 independents included four members of Our Land, three members of UKROP, one member of Agrarian Party of Ukraine and one member of the For Specific Cases party, who had not been nominated by their parties.

Electoral support for parties

Електоральна підтримка партії Слуга народу на Парламентських виборах в Україні 2019 року.svg, Servant of the People Електоральна підтримка партії ОПЗЖ на Парламентських виборах в Україні 2019 року.svg, Opposition Platform — For Life Електоральна підтримка партії Батьківщина на Парламентських виборах в Україні 2019 року.svg, Batkivshchyna Електоральна підтримка партії Європейська Солідарність на Парламентських виборах в Україні 2019 року.svg, European Solidarity Електоральна підтримка партії Голос на Парламентських виборах в Україні 2019 року.svg, Voice

Single-mandate constituency results

About 80 percent of the elected candidates had never been elected to parliament; 83 deputies managed to get reelected from the previous parliament and 13 deputies from earlier convocations.Who Is Who in the Ukrainian Parliament?
, Carnegie Europe (24 September 2019) All deputies from Servant of the People were political newcomers. 61 percent of the new MPs had never before been engaged in politics.

Notes

References

External links

Official website
of the

{{Verkhovna Rada Parliamentary elections in Ukraine

Parliamentary In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

9th Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada