HER Japanese ancestry, glamorous looks and feminist views make Irina Khakamada an unconventional, and some say unrealistic, rival to Vladimir Putin as President of Russia.

But the self-made businesswoman and admirer of Margaret Thatcher has emerged as the new face of the Russian opposition with a dramatic last-minute announcement that she will stand in next year’s election as an independent candidate.

“I have chosen the way of the samurai,” Mrs Khakamada, 48, the daughter of a Russian mother and a Japanese communist who emigrated to the Soviet Union, said. “I made a decision to get the ball rolling.”

Her announcement, less than 48 hours before today’s deadline for registration, came after Mr Putin’s most prominent rivals, the Communist leader Gennadi Zyuganov and ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, said they would not stand. Their parties both nominated relative unknowns.

With approval ratings at about 80 per cent, Mr Putin still looks certain to win an easy second term in March, but Mrs Khakamada will enliven an election that was starting to look too much like a one-horse race, even for the Kremlin’s comfort.

Critics have already accused ex-KGB hardliners in the Kremlin of stage-managing parliamentary elections last month, in which Mr Putin’s supporters won a two-thirds majority and crushed the liberal opposition.

The President’s supporters say that he will use his mandate to root out corruption, streamline the bureaucracy and push forward economic reforms, but the lack of a credible rival stoked fears that Russia was slipping back to its authoritarian past.

“It is no secret that until now candidates put forward were rather colourless individuals, unknown to the masses and not popular among voters, so incapable of offering competition to the No 1 candidate,” Valeri Fedorov, the director-general of the VTsIOM polling agency, said. “Irina Khakamada represents a lucky exception.”

An economist by training, she made a name as Russia’s leading businesswoman after founding a computer software company in the late 1980s. In 1993, she joined parliament, where she promoted small businesses and women’s rights and helped to push through reformist legislation.

She is a co-leader of the liberal Union of Right-Wing Forces (SPS) party, which won only two parliamentary seats last month, compared to 31 held before the poll.

Disheartened and divided by their dismal performance, SPS and another liberal party, Yabloko, failed to agree on a joint candidate for the presidency and were considering telling supporters to boycott the election.

Mrs Khakamada, a mother of two children and a former deputy speaker of parliament, argued, however, that a boycott would further undermine democracy.

“Attempts to create the appearance that the elections are unjust are possible only with a unified opposition front,” she said. “If the opposition is fractured, it is necessary for (liberals) also to put up a candidate.”

An election commission official said that Mrs Khakamada had not yet registered but was expected to have done so before today’s deadline.

Her decision to stand took many in her own party by surprise. An SPS spokeswoman said it was unexpected. A fellow party leader called it an “exotic step”.

Yuliy Nisnevich, a leading party member, said: “I believe it is an utterly emotional decision, which cannot unite liberal voters, and politically pointless to boot.”

A senior Kremlin insider, by contrast, welcomed her candidacy. “She is one of the most worthy politicians of our country,” Andrei Illarionov, an economic adviser to Mr Putin, said. “I think she made the right step and she did this at a time when the male population of the SPS had hidden like cowards.”

Some analysts say that the Kremlin was looking for a candidate such as Ms Khakamada to avoid an election boycott or too low a turnout to make the result valid.

Even though she is sanctioned by the Kremlin, however, Mrs Khakamada is likely to become Mr Putin’s most vocal and eloquent critic and a new driving force in the demoralised opposition.

“The President personifies the whole system of power,” she said. “I would like to present an alternative, in which the authorities are effective and respond to the people’s interests.”

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