THE resignations of three ministers in Jeanine Anez’s coup government show that her “regime is crumbling every day,” a Bolivian democracy campaigner told the Morning Star today.

Economy Minister Oscar Ortiz quit on Monday over the government’s determination to privatise the Electricity and Light Company of Cochabamba, which was brought into public ownership by Evo Morales’s government a decade ago.

Mr Ortiz said the decision should be left to the next administration — elections are due in under a month, with Mr Morales’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) enjoying a commanding lead in the polls.

“I am not ready to sign just any decree,” he said in a press conference in which he accused Interior Minister Arturo Murillo of interfering in the allocation of multimillion-dollar contracts. Labour Minister Oscar Mercado and Productive Development Minister Jose Abel handed in their resignations shortly afterwards.

Mr Murillo, who declared after last November’s military coup that he would ensure ousted president Mr Morales spent the rest of his life in jail, said Mr Ortiz had expressed opposition to the privatisation “in a way that was not correct.”

Aymara indigenous campaigner and democracy activist Miriam Amancay Colque told the Morning Star that the interior minister “is the real head of the regime.

“The regime does not rest for a second. Twenty days before the election they continue with the looting, corruption, privatisation of strategic companies,” she charged.

The hasty privatisation drive was to “present any new government with difficult and expensive renationalisation. If they walk away with privatised utilities it is at least a gain for them.”

She also suggested that the government was still exploring ways to scupper the impending election of MAS. A court will on Monday consider claims that its presidential candidate Luis Arce — Mr Morales has been banned from standing — violated electoral law by discussing poll results inappropriately. 

There is also a danger of “military and fascist reaction” to MAS’s victory, she said, noting the way that far-right militias seized control of the streets following Mr Morales’s re-election last year, giving the army an excuse to order his resignation and appoint Ms Anez.