Virginia Raggi on track to become Rome’s first woman mayor

Rome goes to the ballot box this weekend for what may prove to be a landmark mayoral contest. Not only is it probable that this election will mark another important step in the rise and rise of the Five Star Protest movement (M5S), it could also see a woman elected as mayor of Rome for the first time.

About 13 million Italians are going to the ballot box on Sunday for local elections in 1,351 comuni (cities, towns and villages) throughout the peninsula. If the vote does not throw up a 50 per cent-plus majority winner, the electorate in the larger centres will be called back for a run-off vote in two weeks' time.

Given that five of Italy’s largest and most important cities – Rome, Milan, Turin, Naples and Bologna – will all be electing new mayors, and given that 26 per cent of the total electorate goes to the ballot box, this is clearly an important election.

Even allowing for the peculiarities of local elections, the vote will be a litmus test of the popularity of the Matteo Renzi-led centre-left government.   All the signs indicate that Renzi's Democratic Party (PD) will be the biggest loser in what is the most important vote of all, in Rome itself. If opinion polls are to be believed, the M5S candidate, the relatively unknown 37-year-old lawyer Virginia Raggi, will win not just Sunday's first round but also the run-off vote in two weeks' time.

Forced out of office

Since the last elected mayor of Rome was the PD’s

Ignazio Marino

, a victory by Raggi would represent a signficant vote of no confidence in the governing party.

To some extent, Renzi and the Roman PD party have themselves to blame. Even though Marino won the mayorship in June 2013 with an overwhelming 63.9 per cent in the run-off vote, he was forced out of office last October by his own party, which basically rounded up his PD councillors, took them to a notary’s office and urged them to sign letters of resignation.

The undemocratic nature of Marino's removal by his own party is one of a number of factors which may not only damage the current PD candidate, Roberto Giachetti, but also strengthen Raggi.

At the moment, there are five "major" candidates in the Rome race – Raggi, Giachetti, Stefano Fassina of the far left, and two centre-right candidates in industrialist Alfio Marchini and former neo-fascist Giorgia Meloni.

Split vote

Ms Renzi’s PD will lose votes to both the far left and to the M5S movement. Given that the centre-right vote is split between Marchini and Meloni, this leaves the way clear for the M5S to clean up, profiting as always from the latent protest vote in these times of austerity.

Opinion polls put Raggi in front on about 29 per cent, at least three points clear of her closest rival, Giachetti. Perhaps Renzi has been studying those same opinion polls. Perhaps that is why he has spent much more time in the last month campaigning for a Yes vote in the October constitutional referendum than for PD candidates in the local elections.

Two weeks ago, Renzi got his retaliation in first, when he said: “In these local elections, we are talking about mayors, about the guys who need to mend the potholes in the roads and run local services, not about who is governing the country.”

Well, yes, but Rome is the seat of government.