(ANSA) - Rome, May 25 - Anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) Rome mayoral candidate Virginia Raggi on Wednesday denied she would be "remote-controlled" by M5S founder Beppe Grillo if she wins the June 5 elections.
"I want to reassure voters: I will be mayor and I will respond to the citizens...Grillo will remain the guarantor of our principles but I'll be the mayor"," she told an ANSA forum.
"Our programme was written with the citizens and for that reason too I will respond to the citizens," she stressed.
Raggi is the frontrunner in the race.
Raggi also told the forum Wednesday that she wanted to work with Premier Matteo Renzi's government if elected on June 5.
"I hope that Renzi, too, is willing," she said, adding that "special powers are needed for the city, but let's use the existing ones well".
Raggi on Wednesday hit back at Premier Matteo Renzi for calling her a "temp worker" employed by the M5S's Web strategy company Casaleggio Associates.
"If I win I'll be Rome mayor, I find Renzi's words on being a temp worker insulting," she told an ANSA forum.
"I'll be mayor, there's no doubt about it, (M5S founder Beppe) Grillo will only be the guarantor of honesty and transparency, our values".
She said that, among her first acts, would be a fight "against waste" and in favour of schools.
The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) has decided to draw up an ethical code and create a special advisory team of MPs for city mayors in response to the Capital Mafia scandal that saw an organised criminal group muscle in on Rome city contracts, Raggi said. "With the code of behaviour and the staff we wanted to start from Rome, for its role as capital and for the Capital Mafia affair which left a big mark on the city and on the citizens," said Raggi, frontrunner in the June 5 race.
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