Roundup: Italian local elections send worrying signal to Renzi gov't

Sunday's local elections in Italy ended with all major cities set to have run-off votes between the first and the second best contenders on June 19, which Prime Minister Matteo Renzi admitted was a sign of "problems" for his center-left Democratic Party (PD).

No candidates in Rome, Milan, Bologna, Naples and Turin won more than 50 percent in the first round of the vote to elect mayors and municipal councils in 1,342 cities and towns across the country.

Over 13 million Italians were eligible to vote, and turnout was around 62 percent, a lower figure compared to more than 67 percent registered in the previous local elections in 2011, yet high enough to send a worrying signal to PD.

In capital city Rome, the ballot will be between PD, whose candidate Roberto Giachetti won less than 25 percent, and the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement (M5S), whose candidate Virginia Raggi, a 37-year-old lawyer, got over 35 percent.

"The M5S has a very concrete possibility of taking control of Rome, a city with centuries of history, and the capital of a country currently ruled by the moderate left," Fabio Martini, political analyst with Turin-based La Stampa newspaper and a frequent television commentator, told Xinhua.

The grassroots M5S, which is currently the second largest political force in parliament, has not run for elections in most Italian municipalities because it aims at conquering strongholds with a symbolic value in Italy's politics, Martini noted.

In 2014, for example, the M5S took power in Livorno, a city with a solid leftist tradition, he added.

Rome has been under special administration since former mayor Ignazio Marino, a member of the PD, resigned at the end of last year amid accusations of expense irregularities. The Italian capital in recent times has been at the center of a series of corruption and mismanagement scandals, which involved dozens of mainstream politicians and fueled support for the M5S.

The M5S, founded in 2009 by comedian-turned-activist Beppe Grillo, is fighting against privileges for mainstream politicians and other favored categories, Martini explained to Xinhua. For example, one of its flagship battles is for the abolition of public funding to parties, and the M5S takes pride in giving back part of the money received from the state.

Meanwhile, in Italy's second largest city and business capital Milan, Giuseppe Sala, the former head of Milan Expo 2015, whose candidacy was launched and supported by Renzi, was at a close distance with his center-right rival Stefano Parisi.

"The center-right can also be competitive when it presents a united front and nominates credible candidates, such as it happened in Milan. In this case, triple-pole Italy -- PD, M5S, and the center-right -- becomes polarized again," Martini went on saying.

"PD is suffering" was a frequent comment in the headlines and among analysts after the vote. They pointed out the disaffection of citizens faced with continuous scandals affecting mainstream parties, including the PD in Rome and other major cities of Italy.

Renzi, whose government has just recently entered its third year in office, in a press conference held at the headquarters of the PD in Rome on Monday, admitted he was "not satisfied" about the voting results.

He said the worst result for the PD was Naples, where outgoing mayor Luigi de Magistris, an independent left-winger, took close to 43 percent of the vote.

"We are not happy ... the PD has problems that we have to face," Renzi told journalists.

"We can and must do better, which I hope will lead us to be the strongest possible in the run-off," the prime minister added.

Yet, Renzi also underlined his candidates were above 40 percent in most cities. For this reason, he stressed, Sunday's elections cannot be considered as a debacle of PD, but as a sign of the "electoral freedom of citizens" who have started choosing the candidates who are the ablest to persuade them, no matter their political affiliations.

According to media and observers, the overall poor result of the PD can now reverberate at a national level and test the popularity and stability of Renzi ahead of a key upcoming referendum scheduled for October on a constitutional reform introduced by his government to overhaul Italy's political machinery.

Citizens who have cast their "protest vote" in Sunday's local elections "will not be able to vote anything but yes in the referendum," said a confident Renzi, who has repeatedly made it clear over the past months that he would resign if the reform failed to be confirmed in the referendum. Endit