ROME, Italy (CN) — Potholes devouring vehicles, trash piling up on streets, aging public buses catching on fire, graft-prone politicians running government. Don't call Rome the city of la dolce vita.
Romans are not happy with the state of their city and they've lost faith in Virginia Raggi, the city's first female mayor, who came into office in 2016 pledging to turn the troubled Italian capital around.
When elected, Raggi was the new face of Italy — and a sign of a big change in Italian politics. She was just 37 years old — the youngest mayor Rome has ever had — and a rising star of Italy's growing political force: The anti-establishment and anti-corruption digital party known as the 5-Star Movement. But the political honeymoon is over — and has been for a while.
Raggi came into office with 67% of the vote, but a recent opinion poll conducted for Il Messaggero, Rome's major newspaper, found 73% of the 800 Romans surveyed unhappy with Raggi.
“Rome is disgusting,” complained Dario Pallotta, a 65-year-old tobacco shop owner, on a recent summer evening. “She hasn't made anything better. And she lost the Olympics for us.”
After taking office, Raggi withdrew Rome's bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, saying it would cost too much money for a city that was “unlivable” and unable to pick up its own trash.
It was a controversial decision because some saw hosting the Olympics as a chance to lure investment into a city in need of an uplift and because the city's bid called for renovating and reusing structures left over from Rome's 1960 Olympic Games.
Pallotta cast his eyes over the square where he sat near the Milvian Bridge that crosses the Tiber River and he frowned. He had little to say that was upbeat about Rome under Raggi.
“There might be more potholes” than when she took office, he said. “The trash has gotten worse. For now nothing is better. The one good thing she did was get rid of Marino.”
A friend sitting with Pallotta nodded in agreement. Raggi replaced former center-left Mayor Ignazio Marino, who was brought down by an expenses scandal. Marino was preceded in office by Gianni Alemanno, a center-right politician who was at the center of a wide-ranging corruption scandal, known as the Mafia Capitale case, involving criminal groups and city government.
The story of corrupt politicians is all too familiar to Romans.
“They eat all the money,” Pallotta said of politicians, making a hand gesture of stuffing his mouth. He added cynically: “I would do the same if I was in office.”
Raggi and her 5-Star Movement promised to do better —most importantly, they promised to break the cycle of corruption and self-serving politicians that has plagued Italian politics.
“It’s in this scenario that the 5-Star Movement — and Virginia Raggi in Rome — proposed a different view of politics and politicians,” said Federica Formato, a lecturer at the University of Brighton in England who studies women in Italian politics. “They maintained that they were different from the (ruling) elite, having the citizens’ interests at heart,” Formato said in an email to Courthouse News
Raggi's election was a big moment for the 5-Star Movement, proving that it could win high office.
“Romans really believed that Virginia Raggi could break this cycle and help the city to regain dignity and pride,” Formato said.