CARACAS, Venezuela (CNN) -- One day after getting voter backing in his
                  bid to recast the constitution, President Hugo Chavez signed into law a package
                  of emergency economic powers and began to prepare the country for new tax
                  measures.

                  "The enabling law is the first step toward reducing the deficit, toward
                  leashing the devil," Chavez said after meeting with his Cabinet to accept new
                  powers that allow him to bypass Congress on a wide range of economic
                  reforms.

                  The enabling law, granted by the opposition-dominated Congress, made the
                  former paratrooper Venezuela's most powerful president since the fall of the
                  last military dictatorship in 1958, legislators said.

                  Chavez said he would gather his Cabinet again on Tuesday to begin putting
                  the final touches on two new tax initiatives: a 15.5 percent value-added tax
                  and a 0.5 percent tax on financial transactions, both aimed at helping to
                  reduce the country's $9 billion deficit. To soften the impact, he also
                  announced that he would decree a 20 percent pay raise for public sector
                  workers.

                  The announcements came as the coup leader-turned-president began to
                  exercise the extraordinary short-term powers granted him last week, and as
                  the country began to measure the impact of Sunday's vote backing a
                  constitutional overhaul.

                  Chavez dismisses high abstention rate

                  Speaking at a news conference shortly after signing the law, Chavez rejected
                  criticism that the resounding vote in favor of electing a Constitutional Assembly
                  was undermined by abstention of more than 60 percent.

                  "They've floated the idea that I should consider resigning, but the ones who
                  should resign are those who try to halt the changes in Venezuela which
                  nobody can stop," he said.

                  Analysts and opposition politicians, however, highlighted the abstention rate.
                  While Chavez garnered 3,674,000 votes when he swept to victory last
                  December, only 3,009,000 turned out Sunday to vote for the measure that
                  he had made the centerpiece of his administration.

                  "The country isn't interested ...," political analyst Carlos Raul Hernandez said
                  Monday. "The Constitutional Assembly has become something that only
                  Chavez and his sympathizers care about."

                  "The president has suffered a severe defeat," said Congresswoman Mireya
                  Rodriguez of the opposition Project Venezuela.

                  The wildly popular Chavez contends political elites wrote the 1961
                  constitution to guarantee a monopoly on power. He says a new writ will help
                  end their grip on power, curb corruption, slash one of the most bloated
                  bureaucracies in Latin America and overhaul a notoriously slow and biased
                  judicial system.

                  He said Sunday the referendum marked the first time in Venezuela's history
                  that the people were allowed to vote on a major public issue, and said it
                  demonstrated that he is a democrat.

                  Despite such protestations, Chavez, a former army paratrooper who led a
                  bloody 1992 failed coup attempt, has been unable to shake his image as a
                  dictator-in-waiting. Critics fear Chavez may use the constituent assembly to
                  dissolve the other two branches of government and change the law so he can
                  stay in office up to 14 years.

                  Conflict with Supreme Court remains

                  Part of that fear stems from the power struggle Chavez and the Supreme
                  Court have been locked in over the purview of the Constitutional Assembly.

                  This month, the court ruled that the assembly would not have the authority to
                  dissolve Congress and the judiciary. On Sunday, Chavez repeated that he
                  believes the ruling to be irrelevant.

                  He called for an overhaul of the nation's major institutions, and said, "Today
                  the national organism ... is dead, it's a cadaver."

                  Regardless, Venezuela's financial community greeted the events Sunday and
                  Monday as positive developments. Caracas stocks closed up 3.6 percent
                  Monday as investors welcomed the peaceful nature of Sunday's vote.

                  Elections for the 131-member Constitutional Assembly are due to take place
                  in late June. The assembly should start work on July 5 and have six months
                  to re-write the 1961 constitution currently in place.

                           The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.