KIEV, September 6 - RAPSI. The Ukrainian Supreme Adiministrative Court has ruled that ballots can be printed without the names of convicted officials Yulia Tymoshenko and Yuri Lutsenko, former Ukrainian prime minister and interior minister, respectively, the Fatherland opposition party reported on Thursday.

A court panel made the decision after hearing the appeal of the Fatherland party against a Kiev Appellate Administrative Court ruling that Tymoshenko and Lutsenko should be excluded from the ballots.

The panel commented in its decision that it sees no evidence in the Fatherland party's lawsuit that the Central Election Commission's (CEC) actions will harm the plaintiff.
"The court panel holds that the decision of the court of first instance is lawful and is not subject to appeal," the decision reads.

In October 2011 Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years in prison for abuse of power. Lutsenko was convicted of misappropriating state funds and sentenced to four years in prison in February 2012.

The court said that the CEC had acted within its rights and in accordance with the law.

Tamara Mazur, a representative of the Fatherland party, told journalists that the opposition would appeal the administrative court's decision in the Supreme Court.

Last week, Ukraine's CEC approved the text and the format of the party's voting ballots. The Ukrainian opposition filed a lawsuit with the courts seeking to require the CEC to amend the format and the content of the ballot. The united opposition is indignant that Yulia Tymoshenko and Yuri Lutsenko are not represented on the ballot even though they made the top five candidate list at the opposition's meeting in July.

The CEC's representatives said that it had acted within the law and sought to dismiss the opposition's lawsuit.

Earlier, the commission had refused to register Tymoshenko and Lutsenko as parliament deputy candidates due to their outstanding convictions.
Parliamentary elections will be held in Ukraine on October 28.