The new face of Italian politics – but can she run Rome?

It’s the moment of truth for Italy’s Beppe Grillo, the comedian turned politician, said Andres Wysling in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zurich). Since winning more than 100 seats in parliament in 2013, his Five Star Movement (M5S) has played a purely obstructive role, disrupting Italy’s politics in the process. Grillo calls for change, but has never once proposed a meaningful reform. Yet all of a sudden his party has acquired a share of power by winning two key mayoral races. In Rome, M5S’S Virginia Raggi won 67% of the vote: plagued by uncollected rubbish, transport delays and political scandals, local voters turned to this young woman, who has virtually no political experience, believing she can do better than the professional politicians. And in Turin, her colleague Chiara Appendino, equally young and inexperienced, has been cock-ahoop at her victory, declaring “everything” will change and “this is just the beginning”. But the beginning of what?

Protest is one thing, governing a complex city quite another – as Raggi and Appendino will soon find, said Dominik Straub in Der Standard (Vienna). For Raggi, it will be a “titanic” task getting to grips with Rome’s notoriously corrupt politicians and police (many recently revealed to be in cahoots with the Mafia), its “strike-happy” transport and sanitation workers, and its lethargic bureaucrats, not to mention a g13bn debt – twice the city’s annual budget. The two women will be shackled by party rules requiring them to submit important decisions to Grillo and other party bigwigs. Yet if they fail to make quick headway, it will be their turn to be scorned by angry voters.

The M5S breakthrough is a terrible result for Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and his ruling centre-left Democratic Party, said Massimo Gramellini in La Stampa (Turin). We’re seeing a revolt against the old regime by a new “third class”, the social classes worst hit by the financial crisis, whose scorn of professional politicians is so deep they see inexperience as a positive bonus. It’s like a mutiny where the crew hands command of the ship to the “cabin boy”. This could well put an end to Renzi’s ambitious constitutional reforms, said Bloomberg (New York). He badly wants to reduce the power of the Italian Senate, which currently has as much clout as the lower house. This results in constant deadlock, and helps explain why Italy has had 63 governments since 1946. But in their present mood, voters – in the referendum he’s scheduled for October – may well reject his reforms. Meanwhile, the new ascendancy of M5S also shortens the odds of Grillo achieving a key goal: a referendum on Italy leaving the EU. The next few months will see just how disruptive his movement can become.