EUPHORIA at every level met Hugo Chavez's election as president of Venezuela on December 6th. The poor danced in the streets to celebrate the triumph of the man who promises to free them of drug gangs and corrupt officials. The rich danced in the stockmarket, which soared at once, and was 46% up as it closed on December 9th. The uncertainties and fears of social unrest—or a coup—had melted away, leaving the country in almost manic good humour.

One reason is Mr Chavez's huge majority. “Mr”? Yes, fair enough: he is a civilian now, for all the paratroop beret in which he campaigned. But as an army colonel he led a bloody failed coup only six years ago. Few held it against him on election day, though: he won 56% of the vote, against 40% for the Yale-educated Henrique Salas Römer, beaten even in Carabobo, the state that he governed, and well, for ten years.

In the last days of the campaign, Democratic Action (AD) and COPEI, the two parties that have dominated Venezuelan politics for decades, both withdrew support for their earlier candidates to rally behind Mr Salas. In vain: his vote was just two points above his latest opinion-poll score. The voters showed their disgust with the big two parties, and their results: a system, in which, as critics see it, the rich quarrel over the icing and the cake while the poor share the crumbs. They were voting too against the free-market reforms introduced—albeit with less than wild enthusiasm—by the current president, Rafael Caldera. And against something that is no Venezuelan's fault, the crumbling price of oil and its effects on an oil-driven economy.

Mr Chavez during the campaign had been a man of many faces, some scary. For his victory speech he put on his best face (and suit), emphasising the importance of a democratic opposition and the joys of prudent free-market economics. How long his critics' good cheer lasts will depend on what he says and does before taking power on February 2nd. His most controversial campaign promise, alarming those who saw him as a potential dictator, was to set up a constituent assembly, made up of a cross-section of society, that could bypass the opposition-dominated Congress. He still wants one, and says he will call a referendum if need be to get it. But he now hints that it could complement Congress rather than brush it aside.

What would it do? One possibility is that Congress will handle more technical reforms, while the assembly ponders such topics as an end to the ban on presidential re-election. Some parties now say they could live with an assembly under such conditions. That makes an early constitutional crisis or a permanent government-opposition war seem less likely.

On economic issues, the signals are mixed. Mr Chavez accepts that the fiscal deficit is a problem, ever worse as the price of oil slides. He has promised to crack down on tax-dodgers and reduce the huge civil service. In the past he has not ruled out asking for IMF help. But some analysts are alarmed at his talk of renegotiating Venezuela's $35 billion foreign debt, albeit that servicing it, as he points out, eats up nearly 30% of the budget. Eyebrows also rise at his promise—not a very firm one, though—to increase the minimum wage. One economist remarks that he talks about redistributing wealth, but has nothing to say about creating more of it.

How Mr Chavez deals with Venezuela's wealth-creator-in-chief, the state oil company, PDVSA, is therefore crucial. In his victory oration, he lambasted it as a “state within a state”, grown fat and arrogant after years of being only loosely accountable to anyone but itself. He aims to control it more tightly, make it more transparent and give it less money, so that he can spend more on social programmes. Whether the outcome is good or bad will depend on whether he also continues with the gradual opening of Venezuelan oil to foreign investment. Here too his real intentions remain something of a mystery, perhaps to Mr Chavez himself. To some analysts his anti-PDVSA talk is bad news for the opening-up; others believe it is mainly show.

And Mr Chavez is certainly a showman. That is his problem. His inflated rhetoric of the past few months has left nobody sure that what he says now means more than what he said before. His final campaign speech, for example, seethed with nationalistic bombast. There is one unambiguous thing that he could say soon: the names of the people whom he wants to run the economy under his presidency.

Many observers compare his situation with that of Argentina's President Carlos Menem, who appointed a tough, independent-minded economist, Domingo Cavallo, as finance minister. If Mr Chavez picked someone similar, to offset his own unpredictability, they say, he might calm jittery foreign investors, even while meeting some of his supporters' reasonable demands and calming their wilder ones with populist, but unthreatening, gestures.