In the Rome envisioned by Virginia Raggi, who is vying to become the city’s next mayor, a new fleet of buses drive in delegated “fast lanes”, traffic flows seamlessly thanks to “smart” traffic lights, rubbish is picked up diligently, and public service contracts are carefully vetted and managed.

It may not sound like a particularly ambitious agenda for a major European capital. But for residents of the Eternal City, who know only too well the vast gulf that exists between the romantic view of the city and the everyday reality for people who live here – the overflowing rubbish bins, unreliable public transport, rampant illegal parking and overgrown public parks – it is nothing short of revolutionary.

“Our vision is of a city that is livable, first of all, which it is not at the moment, for all the Romans who live here and the tourists who … find themselves in front of a city that is devastated and very difficult,” Raggi said.

The insurgent 37-year-old lawyer and former member of Rome’s city council has emerged as one of the favourites in the election which is expected to be held in June, eight months after Ignazio Marino, the former Democratic mayor and transplant surgeon who promised to revive the city, was forced out following a scandal involving his expenses.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ignazio Marino pedalled a ban on traffic in certain parts of Rome before an expenses scandal forced him out of office. Photograph: Franco Origlia/Getty Images

If she wins, Raggi would not only be the first woman to lead the city but she would also score a significant victory for the Five Star Movement, the populist Eurosceptic party established by former comedian Beppe Grillo that now stands as the second most popular political party in Italy.

While Grillo’s M5S has long been seen as a protest party that was short on policy and more than a bit wacky, the ascendancy of polished politicians like Raggi across Italy marks an important turning point for the party and a sign that it might be moving beyond Grillo. It would also be a humiliating defeat for prime minister Matteo Renzi’s Democratic party (PD).

Asked what she makes of the prime minister, himself a former mayor, Raggi did not hesitate in delivering her cool assessment: “[Renzi] is working for the banks and not the citizens.”

As for the other important man in Rome – Pope Francis – Raggi said she thought the Argentinian was probably a “Grillino” (derived from Grillo), ie a supporter of M5S’s views on environmentalism and stand against corruption. If elected, one of Raggi’s objectives would be to claim between €250m and €400m in allegedly unpaid taxes on the Vatican’s real estate holdings and other assets, which she claims have never been collected by the city’s administration for fear of taking on the church.

“I think that on this point, we could have a frank discussion,” she said, noting that the pope has raised the issue in the past.

In an interview with the Guardian in an office just a skip away from the prime minister’s residence, Palazzo Chigi, and in the middle of a race that has of late been dominated by a spat between rightwing rivals – about whether a mother could also be mayor – Raggi seemed delighted to talk up her three big priorities: mobility, transparency, and rubbish collection.



She rails against the particularly Roman phenomenon, “which practically doesn’t exist abroad”, of people who use public buses but do not pay fares (it is an honour system and checks are exceedingly rare).

“There need to be more controllers, and we’ll make it obligatory for people to get on in the front of the bus. We will do small things, of common sense, that have never been done,” she said.

“We have to bring legality back, something that in Italy, in Rome, isn’t there,” she said.

Raggi emphasises public transport: she wants to replace the city’s 15-year-old buses with a new fleet of hybrid electric buses and says she is not a fan of Uber, which she believes creates “unfair competition”. She is also seeking to reorganise the way lorries circulate the city, saying it is untenable for tens of thousands to be moving through Rome with only one or two packages to deliver.

But Raggi readily acknowledges that achieving anything in Rome will mean confronting the city’s rife corruption. While Rome was previously seen as a step above the unofficial capitals of organised crime in Italy – Sicily, Naples, Reggio Calabria – a neverending stream of scandals known collectively as “Mafia Capitale” has made it clear that almost every public service in Italy’s capital has been sullied by mismanagement and corruption.

Raggi’s response is for more transparency, more controls, and open data.

“There are staff in Rome who want to work honestly, heightening controls internally and externally,” she said.

It is an issue in which she clearly stands with her party leader, Grillo. But she hedges on other, controversial, views belonging to the party boss, who has been a cheerleader for Nigel Farage, among other anti-EU figures.

Asked whether she endorses his view that Italy ought to have a referendum on keeping the euro as a currency, Raggi said citizens ought to be able to “speak up” about the eurozone, but also acknowledged that Italy was better off in Europe than out of Europe.

“I think it would be difficult to leave Europe, but Europe needs to change,” she said.

While she defends a recent controversial move by Grillo in which he backed off a political agreement in which the M5S was going to support parental rights for same-sex couples as part of a broader bill on civil unions – the proposal had to be withdrawn – she said she personally supported rights for same-sex parents.

She also takes a different tone to Grillo’s sometimes xenophobic views on the migration crisis, saying Rome needed to more swiftly identify asylum seekers, but that the city ultimately had legal obligations to house migrants.

“We have to understand why these people leave – it is a war we all helped create,” she said.

For now, her candidacy has been clouded by a single controversy: her early work as an apprentice at a law firm of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s attorney, Cesare Previti, who was later convicted of bribing a judge.

She denounces the “debate and all this confusion”, saying it was an attack on “all category of lawyers”.

“The message it transmitted is that if you are a lawyer who defends a criminal, also the lawyer is a criminal. If you are a doctor that treats a mafiosi, are you a mafioso?” she said.