Rome is set to elect its first female mayor in a run-off vote in municipal elections.<\/p>\n
Virginia Raggi, from the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, is seen as the favourite against Roberto Giachetti of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD).<\/p>\n
Her victory would be a blow to Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.<\/p>\n
His PD party may also lose in Italy’s financial capital, Milan, and faces tough battles in Turin and Bologna.<\/p>\n
Ms Raggi, a 37-year-old lawyer, won 35% of the vote in the first round two weeks ago, against 24% for Mr Giachetti.<\/p>\n
Correspondents say a victory in Rome would give anti-globalist Five Star a platform for parliamentary elections due in 2018.<\/p>\n
The next mayor of Rome will find a city mired in debts of more than \u20ac13bn (\u00a310bn; $15bn) – twice its annual budget.<\/p>\n
Romans are frustrated by potholes, piles of rubbish and serious deficiencies in public transport and housing, the BBC’s James Reynolds in reports from the Italian capital.<\/p>\n
Founded by comedian Beppe Grillo in 2009, Five Star has been campaigning against the corruption that has plagued Italian politics for years.<\/p>\n
PD’s Ignazio Marino resigned as mayor of Rome in October over an expenses scandal. The city has been without a mayor since then.<\/p>\n
A much bigger scandal, involving alleged Mafia influence in Rome city hall, has fuelled Five Star’s rise.<\/p>\n
It is looking to establish itself as the main opposition party in the 2018 general election.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Renzi has staked his political future on an October referendum in which he wants Italians to back far-reaching constitutional reforms.<\/p>\n
The plan is to end Italy’s tradition of “revolving-door” governments and inject stability after years of party infighting and legislative logjams.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rome is set to elect its first female mayor in a run-off vote in municipal elections. Virginia Raggi, from the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, is seen as the favourite against Roberto Giachetti of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD). Her victory would be a blow to Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. His PD party may also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":223625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=223615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/223625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=223615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=223615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=223615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}