Rob Corbidge: Public disorder leaves Greek future unknown

HOW much appetite does the Greek public have for continued disorder?

The violent events of yesterday seem to have occurred largely at the instigation of the capital's well-known "anarchist" agitators, always keen for a fight – albeit joined by a substantial number of those without such a regularly sharpened political axe to grind.

So clearly those ordinary people are angry about the economic ordeal they are about to go through as a result of the austerity measures. But "murder" – as Prime Minister George Papandreou described the deaths of three bank workers yesterday – is quite another thing.

The dead will not be the tax-dodging plutocrats with Swiss bank accounts against whom much public ire is directed. They will be ordinary Greeks too.

Sustained mass civil disorder usually brings about the fall of all but the most authoritarian governments, but the Greeks have little choice other than the newly-elected left-wing Papandreou administration.

There is no credible opposition – the Communists are visible and vocal critics of the IMF/EU aid package, but do not have the wider support to form a government. The previous right-wing administration were cast from power precisely because they had led the country into such a financial morass.

An almost unimaginable scenario could see the country's powerful military take some steps to stabilising the situation if it seriously deteriorated – but surely Greece could not return to the junta of 40 years ago. Not within the context of the EU, at the very least.

The Greeks are effectively all in it together – it is no small irony that the very same policemen who faced a hail of missiles and abuse yesterday are to have their own pay slashed under the spending cuts.

Whether the public ultimately comes to perceive the current situation as one of "violent modernisation" is key. For too long Greece has enjoyed a corrupt public culture, one where rules are there to be broken. Much as this attitude has a certain romance for northern Europeans, it can go too far. The Greeks have run one red light too many.

So what does the future hold? We are likely to see many younger Greeks leaving the country of their birth to seek work elsewhere in the EU.

Papandreou himself, whose father and grandfather held the same job, could become a hero to his people if he holds the country together through this roughest of times – or a villain, remembered only for selling the country out to its more powerful EU masters.