BOGOTA - Ex-terrorist turned politician Gustavo Petro has won the mayoralty of Bogota, defeating former mayor Enrique Penalos by 32 percent of the vote to 25 percent.

Petro, a former member of the M-19 terrorist group, had run for president the year before, coming in fourth. Although a number of ex-terrorists have run for office, and many have infiltrated government institutions, Petro is the first to win a major office.

Former President Alvaro Uribe had campaigned for Penalosa, but some analysts have speculated that Bogota, with a far more left-wing constituency than most of Colombia, saw the intervention by Uribe as an affront that could have helped elect Petro.

Though Petro has been accused of masterminding the 1985 Palace of Justice terrorist attack, he was able to overcome accusations of continued collaboration with Colombia's narcotrafficking terrorist groups. He has also been one of the foremost accusers of corruption against former president Alvaro Uribe and others in his administration.

He has also backed the prosecution of retired Coronel Alfonso Plazas Vega, a former cavalry officer who was in charge of the cavalry unit that was called in to try to rescue Supreme Court justices when M-19 terrorists took over the Palace of Justice.

During the siege, the terrorists killed more than a hundred civilians, including 11 Supreme Court justices, and set the building on fire to try to destroy evidence that could be used to extradite drug traffickers to the United States.

Plazas Vega, considered a hero at the time for his attempts to rescue the hostages and end the terrorist attack, was later named Colombia's first "drug czar," and drew the ire of narcotraffickers and many left-wing supporters of the FARC for his aggressive tactics against them.

In June of 2010, a court sentenced Plazas Vega to 30 years in prison based on testimony that was later found to be false.

In an earlier accusation against Plazas Vega that he was able to disprove before he could be charged, Gustavo Petro had accused the Coronel of torturing people at a Cavalry School in 1985.

Petro later apologized to Plazas Vega in 2007, and withdrew the allegations once the coronel showed that his passport had been stamped out of the country at the time that he was accused of torturing left-wing terrorists.

Petro has run for years on "zero corruption" campaigns, and has been one of the most prodigious accusers of former President Alvaro Uribe and other right-of-center politicians.

His tenure as Mayor of Bogota will test his campaign rhetoric, as it has been a position that has brought down many politicians that have fallen into the widespread scandals that have historically marked the office.