It is a question that interests Peruvians and foreign investors alike because of Mr. Humala's résumé. He was once an aficionado of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, who used a constituent assembly and a constitutional rewrite to consolidate power and remain in office for the past 12 years. Bolivia's Evo Morales and Ecuador's Rafael Correa have copied the Venezuelan model and crushed democratic pluralism in their own countries.

Mr. Humala has repeatedly signaled that he wants to distance himself from Mr. Chávez. I therefore expected a strong denial in response to my yes-no question. Instead the answer was murky.

First came a soliloquy that seemed to have little to do with the matter: "I believe Peru needs change. I'm used to working. All my life I have worked. Also I have been in the military, used to working at whatever I have encountered. I am going to work at any issue confronting me." He went on to describe his speeches focused on programs to increase "social inclusion" and to explain why he believes high-profit mining companies need to make a greater contribution to the public purse.

That was followed by this: "With the constitutions of 1993 and 1979, we already did that through a strategy of dialogue, without any need to discard the legal framework. The people elected me to deliver on what I proposed in the campaign, not to get into ideological discussions or topics that in the end don't resolve their daily problems. The first thing I am doing is resolving the problems of my people."

Parsing such responses to key questions has become the most popular parlor game in Lima, and for good reason. If Mr. Humala has actually moderated his previously extreme views on state ownership and control of the economy and put aside any ambitions he may have once had to copy Mr. Chávez, chances are Peru's gradual modernization and fast growth can continue. But what if the former military officer, who once led a failed coup d'etat, merely toned down his rhetoric in order to win the hotly contested runoff election against Keiko Fujimori? In that case, progress is at risk.

Dressed in a dark blue suit, crisp white shirt and crimson tie, the clean-shaven, neatly coiffed president had no trouble articulating his view that macroeconomic stability, through "sound and prudent" policies, is a priority for his government. Under those conditions, he said, he will be able to devote significant resources to his wider goal of "social inclusion."

I pointed out that social inclusion, which seems to be linked to Mr. Humala's preference for what he calls "the social economy of the market," can sound like a policy aimed at producing economic equality. He denied this.

"Social inclusion," is about "transforming the state" so that the services it ought to provide reach communities that have been traditionally ignored by the central government. "Today [the state] is designed to serve 30% of the population," he said. "There is no social inclusion for the other 70%," and as a result "they don't have the opportunity to develop themselves."

These are laudable goals in a country where public services for the poor have long been nonexistent. But Mr. Humala's belief in political will as the antidote for government failure seems naive at best. Experience teaches, for example, that centralized government-managed education almost always falls short. What is more, some public services in Peru, like roads and bridges, are the job of regional governments. Raising their accountability requires political reform.

Then there is Mr. Humala's view of state-owned enterprises. "I will not build a statist economy," he told me. "But what creates jobs is work," and it doesn't matter whether the business is state-owned or private. Furthermore, "independent of whether a business is private or public, there is always corruption."

Mr. Humala's faith in the Peruvian state is troubling not least because of its dismal track record. Yet these ideas are hardly radical. Indeed, some suspect that his Brazilian consultants have convinced him that former Brazilian president Lula da Silva had the right idea when he allowed the market to work while pledging allegiance to the old socialist agenda of the left-wing Workers Party. Mr. Humala's appointments to the central bank and to the agency for competition and intellectual property rights, both individuals with strong market credibility, support this theory.

Yet Peruvians are still guessing about which way the president is likely to turn. He would go a long way toward shoring up his credibility and boosting national confidence if he would only answer their concerns directly. Many wonder why he is hesitant to do so.