ATHENS (MNI) – A building belonging to Greece’s Finance Ministry
was set afire Wednesday by rioters protesting the stringent four-year
austerity plan the Greek government has agreed to accept in exchange for
up to E110 billion in aid from fellow Eurozone countries and the
International Monetary Fund.

The Finance Ministry issued a statement Wednesday night saying that
no crucial documents had been lost, though the damage to the building
was extensive.

The fire came on a day when a general strike against the
government’s new fiscal plan erupted into violence, leaving three dead
and tens of others wounded. In Athens, protesters gathered around the
Parliament while some groups threw fire bombs at buildings, cars and
banks. The police answered with tear gas and arrests.

A fire bomb thrown into a branch of the Marfin Bank in Athens,
which was open despite the strike, killed three employees while five
others were rescued from the balcony of the burning building, the Athens
fire department said.

“The country is at the edge of the abyss,” said Greek President
Karolos Papoulias.

The 48-hour strike in Greece’s public sector started Tuesday, and
private sector workers joined in on Wednesday. All government offices,
services, ports, airports, schools and hospitals were shut down as tens
of thousands of people took to the streets.

Even Greek journalists were on strike, but they later went back to
work in order to cover the riots.

The protesters are focusing their fury on the government’s proposed
E30 billion savings plan, which includes significant cuts in public
sector salaries and pensions, the abolition of most benefits and
bonuses, and increases in consumer taxes.

“The people are losing their rights and their future. The country
cannot surrender without a fight,” said Yiannis Panagopoulos, president
of the GSEE — one of Greece’s two largest union organizations, which
was instrumental in orchestrating the strike.

The Socialist Party government announced that it will table the
austerity plan in Parliament Thursday under an emergency procedure which
stipulates that there will be no debate and that the bill can be passed
with a simple majority of 151 out of the 300 seats in Parliament. The
Socialists hold 160 of those seats, so passage should be assured.

Greece’s Prime Minister George Papandreou said he will call an
emergency council of all political leaders under the president of the
republic to discuss the strikes and riots.

He called on all political parties to denounce the violence and
urged them to “undertake their responsibilities and not hide behind the
decisions the government was forced to take to avoid bankruptcy.”

He added: “The country is facing tough times and we must all be
clear.”

The country’s Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou told the
Financial Times in an interview Tuesday that, “we have made mistakes”
but the new austerity plan will “prove our complete determination to
face the problems and exit recession soon.”

The package of spending cuts and tax hikes is intended to reduce
the public budget deficit by 5.5 percentage points of GDP this year
alone, from 13.6% to 8.1%. It is envisioned that by 2014, the deficit
will be brought under the EU’s limit of 3%. But in that same year,
outstanding public debt is projected to be an astronomical 144% of GDP,
up from 113% in 2009 — leading many to predict that a Greek bond
default is inevitable.

–Angelika Papamiltiadou, +306-937-100071; a_papamiltiadou@hotmail.com

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