CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuelans swept a former coup leader, Hugo Chavez, to a historic election victory on Sunday night, delivering him the presidency he failed to seize by force six years ago. Hoping for an end to decades of poverty amid oil wealth, euphoric supporters of the former paratrooper burst onto the streets and filled them with music, fireworks and blaring horns.
The former lieutenant colonel, who on Sunday defeated a Yale-educated businessman, Henrique Salas Romer, with more than 50 percent of the vote, is the first leader in 40 years who has not come from Venezuela's dominant political parties. His meteoric success among legions of disaffected voters smashed the old-line party machinery and fanned fears of leftist dictatorship."We are democrats, and we are going to demonstrate it now," he told a television interviewer here Sunday night, smoothing over the hostility that had marked the campaign. "We're not tyrants. We're not dictators."
Sunday night enthusiastic crowds, many sporting Chavez's trademark red beret, filled a main avenue and shouted, "Viva Venezuela! Viva Chavez!" They chanted demands to rewrite the 1961 Constitution, which had bolstered the rule of the elite for the four decades of Venezuela's democracy. "Chavez: A National Feeling," declared a tall yellow banner raised to serve as the triumphant candidate's backdrop.
As the streets throbbed with the joy of his supporters, nobody was really sure what Venezuela would look like under Chavez, who has been called a nationalist, a Communist, a hero and a would-be dictator. In the campaign, he frequently sported the red beret of the military special forces he once led to storm the presidential palace and called on supporters to crush "los corruptos" on election day.
On Sunday night he took off his beret and wore a business suit in a series of interviews. He said his priorities would be improving education and health care, and creating jobs. He took aim at the state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, saying its budget and operations should be subordinated to national, rather than corporate, goals. "It cannot be seen as a state within a state," he said.
Although Chavez has mentioned privatizing some operations and overseas assets, he ruled out selling the oil company to pay off the country's debt. "We are going to pay our foreign debt, but we have a quantity of other mechanisms to do it," he said.
He mentioned restructuring the foreign debt and trading "a part of the debt for investment projects." He also said Venezuela might seek a one- or two-year "grace period" for some of its debt.
A fiery orator who has visited Cuba and praised President Fidel Castro, Chavez has become the symbol of hope through radical change for the four out of five Venezuelans who are poor, and the dangerous devil to the 20 percent who are not.