OPPOSITION PARTIES TOGETHER AGAIN IN MINSK DEMONSTRATION.

Several thousand Belarusans marched in downtown Minsk yesterday, demanding the release of political detainees and “disappeared” representatives of the opposition. Victims of such repression include former Prime Minister Mikhail Chyhir, former Internal Affairs Minister Yuri Zakharenka, two members of the forcibly dissolved parliament, a number of activists of the Belarusan Popular Front (BPF) and its youth branch, and several other individuals subjected to judicial reprisals for political reasons.

Participants carried portraits of Chyhir–one of the two candidates in the unofficial presidential balloting recently organized by the opposition (AP, May 24). This suggests that responsible leaders of the Popular Front are not going along with BPF chairman Zyanon Paznyak’s effort to discredit other opposition leaders. Last week Paznyak brought the opposition–and the BPF in the first place–to the verge of a split by charging that the opposition’s Central Electoral Commission falsified the results of the balloting and that Chyhir and other opposition leaders were agents of Moscow (see the Monitor, May 12, 20).

President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s propaganda machinery is having a field day exploiting Paznyak’s statements. The opposition’s demonstration yesterday may help counter that propaganda. The timing of the joint demonstration was also significant in that it coincided with the day of Saints Cyrill and Methodius, thereby spoiling to some extent the authorities’ pro-Russian and pan-Slavic rhetoric on that occasion.

POOR PRESIDENTIAL ASPIRANTS IN A POOR UKRAINE.