“Worse” is particularly damning, considering that when Romans elected her, they were desperate. Great change was expected,” said Paolo Conti, who for years has curated a letters-to-the-editors section, not surprisingly heavy with citizen complaints about trash and public transportation, in the Rome pages of the national newspaper Corriere della Sera.Īfter five years of Raggi’s administration, plagued by frequent turnover of city commissioners and heads of public agencies, ”objectively, the city is in worse shape” than when she arrived, Conti said in an interview. Raggi’s election “was hailed as something savior-like. She quickly became one of the most prominent faces of the 5-Star Movement, a grass-roots populist phenomenon created a decade earlier by an Italian comic, and, as of 2018, the largest party in the national Parliament. In 2016, Raggi was a 37-year-old, little-known lawyer and city council member when elected. Rome’s first populist mayor, Virginia Raggi is running for a second term in an election Sunday and Monday, and the sorry state of basic municipal services such as trash pickup and street maintenance is a major issue in this city of ruins, just as it was the first time around. Overflowing garbage bins attract wild boars, terrifying passersby.Īs for mass transit, some subway stations in the commercial heart of the city, awaiting sorely needed escalator repairs, have been closed for months.

With sidewalks impassable because of piles of uncollected trash, people resort to pushing baby strollers down the middle of pothole-pocked streets. ROME (AP) - Curbside weeds in Rome grow so tall, they cover car door handles, giving new meaning to the term urban jungle.

Towering pile of hats