Significant number of ‘new’ MPs voted in Jan 16 dictatorial laws

"They voted for dictatorship"

According to Victoria Syumar, journalist and newly-elected MP from the People’s Front, around 62 MPs who in January this year voted for  Viktor Yanukovych’s seriously repressive laws have probably been re-elected.  Most disturbingly, some of them were supported, she says, by the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko. 

Over recent months activists widely publicized the list of MPs who voted for the Jan 16 package of bills which would have crushed peaceful protest within a matter of weeks; criminalized libel; and attacked civil society by registering NGOs with any foreign funding as ‘foreign agents’ (as in Russia).   Rather than cowering people, the laws simply heightened awareness that EuroMaidan could not stop.  Most of the original bills were revoked just over a week later, though the Yanukovych regime used various means to slip some of the repressive measures back in.

Aside from 8 candidates from the Opposition Bloc, the candidates believed to have been re-elected were standing for election in single mandate constituencies.  According to Syumar, at least one candidate, possibly two, were supported by the Poroshenko bloc

A list of the MPs can be found here