The Greek parliament has approved a deeply unpopular austerity bill to secure a second EU/IMF bail-out and avoid bankruptcy, as buildings burned across central Athens and violence spread around the country.
Prime Minister Lucas Papademos denounced the worst breakdown of order since 2008 when violence gripped Greece for weeks after police shot a 15-year-old schoolboy.
"Vandalism, violence and destruction have no place in a democratic country and won't be tolerated," he told parliament as it prepared to vote on the new €130 billion bail-out.
Papademos told deputies shortly before they voted that they would be gravely mistaken if they rejected the package that demands deep pay, pension and job cuts, as this would threaten Greece's place in the European mainstream.
"It would be a huge historical injustice if the country from which European culture sprang ... reached bankruptcy and was led, due to one more mistake, to national isolation and national despair," he said.
Before the vote, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos told parliament that the alternative to the international bail-out - bankruptcy and a departure from the euro zone - would be far worse for Greeks.
“The choice is not between sacrifice and no sacrifices at all, but between sacrifices and unimaginably harsher ones," he told a stormy debate.
Greece needs the international funds before March 20 to meet debt repayments of €14.5 billion, or suffer a default which could shake the entire euro zone.
The EU and IMF say they have had enough of broken promises and that the funds will be released only with the clear commitment of Greek political leaders that they will implement the reforms whoever wins an election potentially in April.
Earlier, Germany ratcheted up the pressure. "The promises from Greece aren't enough for us any more," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble said in an interview published in the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
"Greece needs to do its own homework to become competitive, whether that happens in conjunction with a new rescue programme or by another route that we actually don't want to take," he said.
The bill sets out €3.3 billion in wage, pension and job cuts for this year alone. It also provides for a bond swap to ease Greece's debt burden by cutting the real value of private investors' bond holdings by some 70%. Greece would have missed a February 17 deadline to offer a debt "haircut" to private bondholders if the vote had not been passed.
