THE giddy seizure of Bolivia’s gas fields by President Morales will hurt ordinary Bolivians.

The pity is that they may not hold it against him. By sending in the military on Monday to grab foreign-owned gas and oil fields, he is nakedly trying to shore up his own power.

The presumption must be that he is pitching at the July 2 elections, which will pick an assembly to write a new constitution. That could boost his own powers hugely. His excited move, on the May 1 Labour Day holiday, is no doubt also inspired by the wave of left-wing populism that is sweeping the continent — but other leaders have courted it with more care and judgment.

Under a banner reading “Nationalised: Property of Bolivians”, wearing a white helmet and surrounded by army guards, Morales walked on Monday through the San Alberto gas field, in the southern state of Tarija.

As troops seized 56 oil and gas fields, Morales said that companies would have to agree new contracts with the state-run oil firm, Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), within 180 days.

He added that energy “was just the beginning, because tomorrow it will be the mines, the forest resources and the land”.

Chief executives could be forgiven a jolt of surprise. Soon after his election 102 days ago, Morales worked his way around the energy industry, his red, white and grey striped sweater ubiquitous in pictures around the world, as he beamed at those investing in his country.

He had, to be fair, vowed in his campaign to increase state control over natural resources “looted” by foreign companies, but the nationalisation still came as a shock.

Foreign companies now cannot invest in gas and oil. Others tempted to do so elsewhere in the economy surely will not. The effects will isolate Bolivia and starve it of the capital it badly needs. Bolivia has the second-largest gas reserves in South America, after Venezuela. Many Bolivians feel that this makes their country rich, and should make them wealthy.

Neither is true. Its gross domestic product per head, of $2,700, is less than half of Venezuela’s, a quarter of Mexico’s and a fifteenth of that in the US. But the boom in oil and gas prices has inflamed the public’s sense of grievance. In the way that President Ahmadinejad of Iran was swept to power last year with a promise to put oil money on the kitchen table, Morales has been able to appeal to this simmering sense of resentment and entitlement.

Local polls suggest that he enjoys the support of 80 per cent, although the judges and the Catholic Church have criticised his lack of respect for checks on his power and for human rights, and his use of force. He says that the new assembly, to be elected in July, will write a constitution that will help poorer people to influence government. But critics say that it will simply strengthen his own party’s power.

He has been inspired, clearly, by President Chávez of Venezuela, who has been acting as his elder brother, showing him how to convert noisy opposition to the US into political capital. In 1999 Chávez equipped himself with a similar constituent assembly.

This weekend Morales joined Chávez in Havana, with President Castro of Cuba, to sign a “people’s trade bloc”, exchanging petrol, soya beans and aid between the three countries. But Chávez has been more sophisticated in attacking the US while not terrifying foreign investors. Venezuela does so, in any case, from a position of more resources and prosperity. Morales is not alone; these are heady times in Latin America. The recent election of Michelle Bachelet as Chile’s President, and the emergence of Ollanta Humala in the first round of Peru’s presidential elections, have been held up as further evidence of the continent’s leftward tilt.

They follow in the wake of the now-established Néstor Kirchner in Argentina, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, now leading in Mexico’s presidential race, may follow.

But similar rhetoric conceals very different policies. President Lula has turned out to be surprisingly moderate; President Bachelet is in that camp too, more or less.

Morales has now put himself outside that band. Yesterday the oil markets, and shares in the main foreign investors, reflected alarm — but also uncertainty about how far he will go.

The European Union has expressed acute concern and asked him to make his plans clear.

But more information may be damaging, if his intention is to keep pressing ahead down the disastrous path he chose on Monday.

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