THE REMARKABLY rapid spread of violence throughout Greek cities and towns over the weekend following the shooting dead of a 15-year-old protester by a policeman in Athens reveals a deeper social and political malaise.
Trade unions have called a general strike today over government spending cuts, pension reform and rising unemployment, coming after a long series of sectoral conflicts in transport, schools, banks and other services. Yesterday they refused to call off a protest march to accompany it, rejecting a plea by prime minister Costas Karamanlis, who said it could be an excuse for further riots and vandalism. George Papandreou, leader of the opposition Pasok is calling for general elections as his party is ahead in opinion polls for the first time in years.
The government has only a one seat majority in parliament, so this could happen sooner than many expect, even though Mr Karamanlis won power again in September 2007 on a platform of fiscal retrenchments, deregulation and privatisation of state services. Since then his government has floundered amid a number of corruption scandals, slowing economic growth, rising cost of living, sharply increased levels of inequality and youth unemployment. In recent weeks a €28 billion bailout of the banking system raised resentments about the failure to tackle these acute social problems.
They are the essential backdrop for understanding the intensity and geographical spread of this violence. Riots happened from Evros in northern Greece to Crete in the south, from Ioania to Petras. The original shooting incident in which Alexandros Grigoropoulos died on Saturday night in Exarchia, a bohemian part of Athens associated with lawlessness and drug-taking was followed within hours by serious rioting in Greece's second city Thessaloniki in which over 100 shops were destroyed. Young protesters predominated, egged on by left-wing and anarchist groups; but these tiny political organisations cannot fully explain what has so rapidly become a mass protest movement among young unemployed, school children and students.
Many compare these events to the student protests preceding the fall of the colonels in 1973-4. That is not a fair comparison, since Mr Karamanlis's government was fairly and democratically elected. But the fear of the future reported among those involved, together with widespread despair about orthodox political change and growing poverty are proper causes for reflection. So is the political talk about a state of emergency. These are testing times for Greece's democracy.