After months of protests and legal appeals, the mayor of Colombia's capital lost the fight and has been removed from office. What has been viewed as a struggle between the country's burgeoning left wing and established right wing has come to an end with the latter claiming victory.

In December of 2013, Inspector General Alejandro Ordonez, 58, ordered the mayor of Bogota, which is Colombia's biggest with eight million people, Gustavo Petro, 53, to be removed. In 2012, Petro switched the city's, waste management from private companies to a state-run agency, according to the New York Times. Unprepared for the switch, the city ended up with garbage on the streets.

Ordonez found Petro guilty of mismanagement and of violating a law that required free enterprise and competition. Though the mayor had appealed his decision, he could not overturn the verdict and will be ousted now that President Juan Manuel Santos has signed off on his dismissal, according to the Buenos Aires Herald. Yet, Colombians, Bogotanos in particular, see the struggle as a symbolic representation of the constant fighting between the Colombian government and the FARC left-wing guerrilla group. Petro himself was once a rebel leader for the defunct M-19 group, which opted to join the political field.

Aside from being ousted from office, Petro has also been banned from holding a political office for 15 years, a move he and others see as an attack against the country's political left.

"What they're doing here is trying to get rid of a leftist officeholder who potentially could become a national leader, and therefore there is a probability he could become president," Mr. Petro said, according to the Times.

Ordonez dismisses the claims, but with the current negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC in Cuba, the Times posits that Petro's ousting and punishment tells the rebels that there is no place for them in Colombian politics.

According to the Buenos Aires Herald, the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights asked on Tuesday for the sentence to be suspended and for Petro serve out the rest of his term, but Santos stated that the constitution had to be enforced and assured the public that all legal recourses were explored.