By Ingrid Melander
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek politicians risk a major public backlash if they fail once more to crack down on corruption, Prime Minister George Papandreou told lawmakers on Friday.
"If we do not put the country in order, if we do not create a sense of justice, if there is no respect for the law, they will chase all of us away with stones, and rightly so," he said in parliament.
The phrase has a particular resonance in a country where protesters routinely hurl stones and chunks of marble at police during anti-austerity rallies, scream that lawmakers are thieves and shout "burn parliament."
Ordinary Greeks have been hard hit by wage and pension freezes and tax rises meant to pull the country out of a severe debt crisis. They demand retribution against those they hold responsible for widespread corruption and tax evasion.
Protesters tried to storm parliament last month during a massive anti-austerity march that turned violent and ended with the death of three bank employees. Riot police forced protesters back from the parliament building with batons and tear gas.
Analysts have said that if the government fails to bring serious tax evaders and corrupt politicians to justice soon, many more ordinary citizens may take to the streets in the autumn, demanding action.
The two main political parties -- the ruling socialists and the opposition conservatives -- accuse each other of being responsible for decades of corruption that has helped push the public finances to the verge of bankruptcy.
"We insist on transparency in our country, on rules and accountability, on fighting corruption. We insist on investigating major cases of mismanagement," Papandreou said.
Urging the opposition to help, he added "If you want to contribute effectively, help clean up those immense wounds, the ones you left behind, so we can eventually turn a page in this country and establish law and order and a sense of justice."
Graft scandals played a crucial role in the conservatives' defeat in snap elections in October but have also rocked socialist governments for decades.
Papandreou has been keen to show he is tough on graft and sacked his tourism minister after it was revealed her husband owed the state millions of euros in unpaid taxes.
But a wide-ranging statute of limitations makes it hard to prosecute politicians, and parliamentary committees investigating graft stumble into partisan bickering, with each party standing up for its own members.
The deadly May protest was the most violent since Athens was paralysed for weeks in December 2008, when thousands took to the streets after the police killing of a teen-ager. An anti-austerity march the following week drew a much smaller crowd and passed without incident.
(Editing by Tim Pearce)
