Rydman was first elected as a National Coalition Party MP in 2015, but announced his departure from the party on Monday.
On the heels of announcing his departure from the National Coalition Party, MP Wille Rydman said that he is joining the Finns Party and will run in the next parliamentary elections as a Helsinki candidate.
Rydman, who has been a member of the centre-right NCP since 2002, said he has thought for a long time that his point of view best matches with those of the Finns Party.
In a blog post on Tuesday, Rydman said he thinks that since 2017 the Finns Party has developed into a direction he supports and that it was a more natural choice for him, compared to the NCP.
The MP announced his departure from the NCP on Monday.
Rydman said that despite the party shift, his personal political views had not changed and that he still stands for the same things he has in the past. He said that he will have better opportunities to be politically influential as a member of the Finns Party.
Rydman has served as an NCP parliamentarian for two terms, since the spring elections in 2015. However, the MP resigned from the party’s parliamentary group in June after newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reported that he had harassed young women.
The National Bureau of Investigation opened a preliminary investigation into the allegations, which found that the suspected offence took place in 2015 and that the alleged victim was not underage at the time.
In December, the National Prosecution Authority said the NBI’s probe showed “that there are no probable grounds to support the suspect’s guilt.”
Commenting about Rydman’s party change on Tuesday, Finns Party secretary Arto Luukkanen said the party would not comment about the allegations any further.
“I will say two things. Finland is a western country with a rule of law and a presumption of innocence. A person is only guilty when a case is reviewed in court and the person found guilty,” Luukkanen said.