In the wake of the scandal around Justice Minister Roman Zvarych, it's fair to ask: Just how is President Yushchenko's government more honest than former President Kuchma's?

old the degrees that his official biographies and various confusing statements to the press suggested he did. This would seem to be a matter of fact, beyond dispute. The justice minister’s efforts to explain away the mess or blame other people for it testify to his contempt for his auditors, and have been characterized by a high level of obfuscation and weaselly evasion.

The result of this is that Ukraine’s Justice Ministry should not be taken seriously as long as Zvarych leads it. If you’re ever put on trial in a Ukrainian court for perjury, or giving false information, or charlatanism, remember that the man who’s in charge of the system that’s trying you seems himself to have purveyed misleading information, and is arguably a charlatan. Then see how much respect you have for the system that’s trying you.

But you don’t have to be standing before the law to be disgusted by the Zvarych affair. You just have to a normal, honest person who believed that President Viktor Yushchenko’s government differed in a fundamental way from the Ukrainian governments that preceded it. The old rule of corruption, evasion and cynicism was out, we all believed; honesty and transparency was in. But based on the Zvarych affair, if you believed that, you were nothing but a sucker.

Last Friday and over the subsequent weekend, this already disgraceful case became more disgraceful. First, on May 13, President Viktor Yushchenko defended Zvarych and asked that the media leave him alone. But Yushchenko’s mealy-mouthed effusion was nothing compared to the reprehensible comments of National Defense & Security Council Secretary Petro Poroshenko, who had several things to say on TV about the Zvarych mess.

“Some say that the error was deliberate, that Zvarych lied,” said Poroshenko. “But who determined this? Only a court decision can establish this.”

No, Mr. Poroshenko: the facts are the facts, and no amount of doubletalk can get around them.

“The individuals who ordered and executed the scandal are the same ones who forced Yushchenko out as prime minister,” Poroshenko also said. “They are the same who worked against us in 2001 and at the beginning of 2002. They use the same tactics now as they did them.”

This is a smear of all the Orange Revolution supporters who are now demanding that the Yushchenko government live up to modest standards of honesty – and who put themselves physically on the line last fall to ensure Poroshenko and company had the chance to take office. Poroshenko would have us believe that the same institutions to which he owes his high current office overnight became part of an evil anti-Yushchenko conspiracy, just because they dare pursue the truth about Zvarych. The Web site Ukrainska Pravda, which bravely fought for Yushchenko and the then-opposition, is today part of a plot to discredit Zvarych? Black is white, and white is black. Shame on you, Poroshenko.

Given this sort of obfuscation, arrogance, cynicism and dishonesty, we think a couple questions are in order. One: Just how again does this government differ from former President Leonid Kuchma’s?

Two: Given this current crew’s obvious cynicism, what’s the next step? When, for example, does the official harassment of the media start? When do journalists who dare to challenge the all-powerful justice minister start getting intimidated? Yes, it’s hard to believe that such things could happen again. But it’s also hard to believe that Yushchenko and Poroshenko would be insulting all the Ukrainians who are demanding the smallest bit of honesty from their leaders.

If any reader of this editorial were found guilty of having fudged facts on his resume, he or she would be fired immediately. CV falsification is considered grounds for immediate job termination for everybody – except, that is, for President Yushchenko’s powerful cronies. Those cronies are apparently above the standards of honesty and disclosure expected of the little people.

As we write, young activists – to whom, we repeat, Yushchenko, Zvarcyh and Poroshenko in large measure owe their positions as the internationally lionized “reformist” leaders of a “new” and “democratic” Ukraine – are picketing the Justice Ministry. In a scene right out of the Orange Revolution, they’re keeping up a 24-hour vigil outside the office Zvarych deservedly or not occupies, banging on metal drums.

Keep up the din, fellows, as loud as you can make it. Don’t let this new government play you for fools after you went to the barricades for them. Don’t let them get away with the obfuscations and tall-tales they’re spinning out to a compliant media. And if they don’t play by the democratic, honest rules they promised to play by when they went begging you for your help last fall, then run them out of office in the next election, too.

Parliamentary elections are just 10 short months away.