MOSCOW: A public outcry in Russia over a government plan to scrap Soviet-era benefits has emboldened Kremlin critics long muted by President Vladimir Putin's popularity and iron rule.
Opposition parties, moribund a month ago, are attracting thousands to their demonstrations against the reform law, and groups that toed the Kremlin line are now breaking ranks.
Protests began spontaneously when angry pensioners blockaded a highway in a Moscow suburb. But opposition activists moved in quickly and communist red flags and banners of other opposition and fringe groups demanding Putin's resignation have waved over rallies from Kaliningrad in the west to Vladivostok on the Pacific seaboard.
Putin, in power since 2000, is under no immediate threat as he is still backed by nearly 70 per cent of voters and his supporters control parliament. Police have deployed in force, often outnumbering protesters, but have so far shown restraint.
But the emergence of even modest opposition suggests Putin has become vulnerable for the first time and may struggle to maintain political momentum during his second and final four-year term, which ends in 2008.
"This is a moment of truth," said Sergei Mitrokhin, a deputy head of the liberal Yabloko party which was dumped out of parliament in 2003 and is preparing an anti-government protest in Moscow this weekend. "You can't sit on the fence any longer."
The change in benefits introduced on Jan 1 was a first effort by Putin to shake up the creaking bureaucracy inherited from the Soviet Union. Pensioners reacted angrily when their benefits in kind, like free bus travel and cheap medicine, were replaced with cash handouts they said were too small to cover the perks they lost.
Putin ordered his government to pay out an extra $4 billion, or about 1 percent of gross domestic product, to soften the impact, but three weeks of protests continue.
NEW LANDSCAPE: The Kremlin says opposition parties are exploiting peoples' concerns about benefits for political gain. But some analysts say the issue has changed the political landscape that 52-year-old former spy Putin has dominated since May 2000 with help from a controlled media and an improving economy driven by booming oil exports.
"The trend is moving towards active discontent in society," Liliya Shevtsova of the Moscow Carnegie Centre wrote in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily. "The authorities have laid the foundations for the formation of a vocal and populist opposition."
The nationalist Motherland party has widely been seen as a Kremlin puppet masquerading as an opposition group. However its leader, Dmitry Rogozin, who once acted as a special envoy for Putin, is on a hunger strike in protest at the benefit reform and says his loyalty is running out.
"We've done a lot for Putin, our voters voted for him, we supported him in the most difficult moments," Rogozin said in his office in parliament as fellow hunger strikers lounged on camp beds watching television and sipping mineral water.
"(But) it is his government. He signed the law. Why are we pretending that the Tsar is good and it is the courtiers that are bad?" Several of the normally quiescent regional bosses who have to implement the reform are on the verge of coming out in open opposition to Putin, say analysts.
And the military took the unusual step of releasing an internal opinion poll that showed over 80 per cent of servicemen opposed the benefit changes. Putin responded by ordering a 20 per cent hike in military pay.
Meanwhile, the anti-Putin Communist Party, which has been marginalized as its elderly supporters die out, is enjoying a new lease of life. The party, helped in some cities by the Yabloko liberal opposition, organized protests that attracted 290,000 demonstrators in 60 regions over the past month, said deputy leader Ivan Melnikov. The authorities say the numbers are smaller. -Reuters
