Embattled no more, Gustavo Petro is back in office as Mayor of Bogota.  Colombia’s president reinstated Petro after a tribunal ruled that he never should have been kicked out of office in the first place, an act that Petro’s allies maintain was nothing but politics.

“I’ve signed the decree reinstating Mayor Petro.  My obligation, as president of the republic, is to follow the law and what the justices decide,” said Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.

The tribunal decided that President Santos had acted wrongly in confirming the sacking of Petro, and Santos should have obeyed the 18 March ruling from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to reinstate the mayor because his rights had been violated.  This ends months of peaceful but persistent demonstrations by Petro’s supporters in Colombia’s largest city.

It was December of last year that Petro, a former Leftist guerilla in Colombia’s civil war, was ousted from office by Inspector-General Alejandro Ordonez, a leading ultra-conservative.  Ordonez decided had violated the principles of the so-called “free market” and endangered people’s health during the changeover from privatized trash collections to a city-run service.  Ordonez took advantage of a quirk in Colombian law that allows the most-corrupt public officials to be removed and banned without elections.  The vast majority of Colombians did not believe that a few missed trash pick-ups justified such a move.

In the end, the persecution of Gustavo Petro may come back to haunt Colombia’s far right.  This episode turned him into a hero who fought back against an unjust and inflexible system and won – And the next presidential elections are coming up in 2018.