The 1992 failed coup leader, Mr Hugo Chavez, whose radical message alarmed investors, swept to a landslide victory in Venezuela's presidential election on Sunday and said he would lead "a people's government".
The 44-year-old paratrooper-turned-politician said he would be a "soldier of the people".
"Hugo Chavez's government will be a people's government," he told a cheering crowd in central Caracas after he ran on a nationalist, anti-corruption platform that tapped into widespread anger at falling living standards and high-level corruption scandals.
With more than two-thirds of the votes counted, results showed Mr Chavez with 56.2 per cent of the vote compared to 39.7 per cent for Mr Henrique Salas, a businessman backed by Venezuela's traditionally dominant parties.
Mr Salas (62) acknowledged defeat soon after the results were announced and wished his opponent luck in pulling the world's third-largest oil exporter out of its third recession in the past five years.
The election victory climaxed a remarkable journey for Mr Chavez, who led thousands of troops in a 1992 military uprising in which dozens of people were killed in about 12 hours of sporadic fighting. The coup attempt turned him into a popular figure who built an image as a crusader of the poor after being released from jail without charge in 1994.
His victory on Sunday was greeted with celebrations in the slums of Caracas, the heartland of his support, where volleys of firecrackers and cries of "The people's time has come!" erupted as results became known.
Mr Chavez is the only one with a feeling for the people," said Ms Milagros Trujillo (39), a nurse and mother of five who wore the red military beret that became the trademark of the Chavez campaign. "Now we're going to have a real democracy where the people decide . . . the corrupt ones will have to leave."
Mr Chavez campaigned on pledges to rewrite the constitution, dismiss the country's senior judges and distribute the wealth generated by oil.
Portrayed by rivals as a potential dictator and dangerous extremist during a campaign that split the country along class lines, Mr Chavez said he would prove his critics wrong.
Although his opponents' attacks did not hurt him at the ballot box, they "did create an image of Hugo Chavez which is not me," he told his first news conference as president-elect. Mr Chavez denied he planned to impose a "Cuban-style dictatorship" and said investors would "find a serious government with honest people".
Mr Chavez, who begins his fiveyear term on February 2nd, 1999, said he would seek to improve ties with the United States, which has denied him a travel visa because of his 1992 coup attempt.
Political analysts described the election as a sea change after 40 years of democratic rule that has seen two traditional, but now widely discredited, political parties take turns in power.
"In 40 years of democracy the traditional parties have never done anything for us. We're voting for Chavez because there is so much corruption here and we want a real change," said Jose (33), a labourer from Caracas.