CARACAS: A political opposition leader who returned home after six years of self-imposed exile was arrested moments after landing at the airport and will face corruption charges, authorities said.
The arrest of Manuel Rosales, a former presidential candidate and former governor of the populous state of Zulia, threatens to further stoke tensions in an already polarized country ahead of the Dec. 6 legislative election.
With South America’s largest oil exporter crippled by an economic crisis, polls suggest President Nicolás Maduro’s ruling Socialist Party could lose control of parliament for the first time in 16 years.
In an interview late Wednesday, Mr. Rosales, 62 years old, said he decided to return despite warnings from government officials that he faced jail.
“It seems like all hope has been lost in Venezuela,” he said. “We’re going into chaos, off a cliff and we have to do something about it. I’m going to rile up the people so that they mobilize.”
Mr. Rosales’s party, A New Moment, and others in the opposition coalition held a rally Thursday in the western city of Maracaibo to welcome the former governor. But Mr. Rosales didn’t get far from the city’s La Chinita international airport.
Officers of the National Bolivarian Intelligence Service, or Sebin, detained him after he stepped off a commercial flight from Aruba, according to the Attorney General’s office.
He was to be transported to Caracas and charged with embezzlement of public funds from his time as governor, allegations Mr. Rosales says were trumped up for political reasons.
Known as the “Philosopher of Zulia” for his sometimes confounding public statements, Mr. Rosales rose to national prominence in 2006 when he ran and lost a presidential race against the late leftist leader, Hugo Chávez.
In 2009, Mr. Rosales fled to Peru after prosecutors issued an arrest order, citing an investigation by the comptroller’s office between 2002 and 2004 that concluded he had “registered funds that he couldn’t justify.”
Dismissing the accusations as efforts to quash dissent, Mr. Rosales said he prepared for his return reading history books during two years in Peru and four in Panama.
“I’ve never been separated from Venezuela’s process,” he said. “I’m not going to Venezuela to find a new [political] position. I’m looking for a way out for Venezuela and what it’s living through today.”
The drop in oil prices over the past year has deepened Venezuela’s economic malaise, with dollar shortages that have left the government unable to pay for imports.
Residents grapple with rampant crime, triple-digit inflation and chronic shortages of basic goods such as cooking oil or shampoo that create hourslong supermarket lines—the legacy, critics say, of 16 years of populist rule.
Many economists say Venezuela needs to address its problems through spending cuts and other austerity measures. But speaking from a steel plant Thursday night, Mr. Maduro announced a 30% increase in the national minimum wage, the fourth this year.
“This is only possible in revolution,” Mr. Maduro said.
Mr. Rosales becomes the latest opposition politician to be arrested in Venezuela, where the government has come under fire from the U.S., the United Nations Human Rights agency and other international groups that accuse President Maduro of persecuting rivals.
The most prominent of them is Leopoldo Lopez, leader of the Popular Will Party, who last month was sentenced to nearly 14 years in prison after leading antigovernment street protests in February 2014.
Mr. Lopez is accused of fomenting some of the violence that killed more than 40 people during months of unrest and a subsequent response by state security forces last year. Mr. Lopez has denied the charges.
On Thursday, Mr. Lopez’s party condemned Mr. Rosales’ arrest. “Only in a dictatorship are those who think differently and democratically challenge the government persecuted,” Popular Will said.
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