Goodbye to Petro

'Petro is change, we are all Petro,' says a pro-Petro demonstrator on Plaza Bolivar this afternoon. 

Today, to nobody's surprise, Procurador Ordoñez rejected Mayor Petro's third and final appeal against Ordoñez's own order ousting Petro for mismanaging the reorganization of the city's garbage collection service last year. 

Petro's avenue of appeal against Ordoñez's ruling - which many consider overly severe - was straight back to Ordoñez's office. While Petro, an ex-leader of the M-19 guerrillas, is a leftist, it just so happens that Ordoñez is extremely conservative, making many of us suspicious of Ordoñez's motives. Still, of the approximately 1,000 officials whom Ordoñez has investigated and unseated, many have been conservative. 

Now, Petro has only two, very frail, hopes. One is that Pres. Santos will delay signing the procurador's order. This is uncharted legal territory, but the attorney general recently opined that the president is not obligated to sign the order. And Santos does have a motive for wanting Petro to remain in office, since his ouster would deal a blow to the ongoing government-FARC peace talks going on in Havana, Cuba. 

'Petro stays,'

Petro's other, even slighter hope, is in the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, to which the mayor appealed for support. But even if the commission rules that Petro's rights were violated, Colombia is not obligated to obey the order, altho it usually has in the past. 

But if nothing unexpected happens, Petro will stay in office until the end of January, when Santos is supposed to appoint a temporary mayor. A special election for a new mayor is to be held in a few months.

A steel barrier and riot police protected the Procurador's building this afternoon.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours