Female mayor

Rome elects first female mayor as 5Star Movement shocks Renzi

‘Now we’re a credible government force,’ one 5Star leader said.

By Jacopo Barigazzi

The Euroskeptic 5Star Movement scored a major victory in Italian local elections Sunday, unseating candidates from Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party in the two traditional strongholds of Rome and Turin.

The second round of local elections saw 5Star’s Virginia Raggi, a 37-year-old lawyer, win the capital with 67.15 percent of the vote to become Rome’s first female mayor. Renzi’s candidate, Roberto Giachetti, gathered 32.85 percent of the vote.

In Turin in the north, Chiara Appendino, a 31-year-old manager, won with almost 55 percent.

Renzi’s Democratic Party managed to win Milan, Italy’s business hub, but the prime minister emerges battered from Sunday’s vote, across 121 municipalities, which was being closely watched for signs of who is likely to oppose the former mayor of Florence in the general elections, expected in 2018.

Sunday’s results leaves it more likely he will face a candidate from the anti-establishment 5Star Movement, rather than someone from the center right.

“Now we’re a credible government force,” said Alessandro Di Battista, one of the 5Star leaders, in a talk show.

Its victory in Rome was widely expected after a string of anti-mafia investigations played into its strong anti-corruption stance, but the result in Turin is a surprise.

The northwestern city, which used to be the headquarters of Fiat, Italy’s largest carmaker, was untouched by recent corruption scandals and generally considered well administrated.

“It’s a wave of protest on which Renzi should start to reflect,” said Maurizio Molinari, editor of Turin-based La Stampa newspaper, as other analysts stressed how the 5Star Movement is able to attract votes from both the Left and Right.

Renzi, for his part, refused to concede the outcome of the election was a sanction against him or his constitutional reform plans.

“We have lost the elections in the periphery, not because the voters have expressed themselves on bicameralism or on the voting system,” Renzi said, Il Corriere della Sera reports. “We have lost because these areas were full of garbage and problems and because the capital was badly administered.”

In Naples meanwhile, Renzi’s PD didn’t even reach the run-off. That contest was won by a far left populist, the current mayor Luigi de Magistris, on 66.85 percent of the vote.

Silvio Berlusconi on the center right and Matteo Salvini’s far-right Northern League party both scored poorly. Berlusconi’s candidate Stefano Parisi lost in Milan, while Salvini lost in nearby Varese, an area where the Northern League had previously enjoyed high support.

The results were also being closely watched ahead of a constitutional reform referendum in October to shrink the size and power of the Italian Senate. Renzi has said many times that if he loses there, he will step down.