Venezuela Opposition Leader Appears for Corruption Charges
By Matthew Walter

Dec. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan opposition leader Manuel Rosales appeared before federal prosecutors today to be formally charged with corruption, almost three weeks after being elected mayor of the country’s second-biggest city.

During political campaigns for state and city elections that took place this year, President Hugo Chavez said Rosales should be put in jail for alleged corruption. A spokeswoman at the attorney general’s office confirmed that Rosales appeared today to be charged.

“These accusations are absolutely ridiculous,” said opposition leader Luis Ignacio Planas of the Copei party, in comments broadcast today on the Globovision network. “These kinds of things occur in regimes where there’s no democracy.”

Chavez, who defeated Rosales in the 2006 presidential election, accused several prominent opposition leaders of corruption during this year’s campaign, and early in the campaign the comptroller general ruled hundreds of politicians were ineligible to run because of allegations of corruption. The president is now campaigning for an amendment to the constitution to allow him to run for another six-year term in 2012.

Rosales was governor of the oil-producing state of Zulia before he was elected mayor of the city of Maracaibo in last month’s elections.