Can Malta go down the perilous path being trodden by Greece? Unthinkable, surely. I guess so too. But do not for one moment ignore what is happening in that ancient democracy in the eastern Mediterranean. Apart from how it is hitting Greece itself there is the issue of how the rest of the eurozone is going to be affected.

With Greece it is the case of chickens coming home to roost. That country escaped from the dictatorial grip of its military in our own times. Yet it did not grow into a healthy burgeoning democracy.

By and large, power swings between the groupings behind two major political families. Snapping at their ankles there is, among others, a small but vigorous Communist party.

Idyllic Greece seemed to make much progress on the surface. The economy grew. The standard of living rose.

The European Union took it to its bosom as one of its smaller members, thereby helping it to seemingly control the budget deficit and extending to it the assurance that it would not slip out of the arms of democratic trappings and back into the hell of dictatorship.

More significantly, Greece appeared to reach the targets set for those who wanted to adopt the euro as their currency, thereby to form a new monetary union dubbed the eurozone.

Greece's achievements in terms of its controlled fiscal deficit, and thereby a relatively restrained public debt, seemed miraculous. Volatile Greece, was the verdict, would be able to withstand the rigours of a monetary union, which takes away two important policy instruments from its members to locate them at the centre.

These are the exchange rate, meaning that a monetary union member cannot devalue its way out of lack of competitiveness and balance of payments crises, and the interest rate, meaning that country monetary authorities - the finance ministry and the old central bank - could no longer raise or lower interest rates to tighten or expand credit according to economic requirements.

In a monetary union there can be no devaluation relative to the currencies of the other members - they all have the same currency (like the dollar in all the states in the US). The interest rate for the whole Union is set by a common central bank; in the case of the eurozone, the European Central Bank.

The Greeks were happy. Happy enough to turn tax evasion into an art, giving their country one of the largest underground economies in the world, thereby weakening its tax revenues. Some felt all this was too good to last. It turned out it was too good to begin in the first place.

The Socialist government, returned in the confidence election a few months ago, uncovered the fact that the books - of the country's public finances and statistics - had been cooked. Greece had not been truly strong enough to join the eurozone.

In a matter of weeks, the 2010 Greek crisis exploded. It deteriorated by the hour, spreading fear that the country would have to default on its public loans. That is how a country in a monetary union goes bankrupt.

After much feet dragging by Germany the eurozone agreed a few days ago to bail out Greece with an advance of €80 billion to cover three years' rolling of debt, topped up with another €30 billion by the International Monetary Fund - provided savage austerity measures were imposed on the Greek people to cut back public spending.

Two things resulted at the same time. Much of Greece erupted in protest, which is turning violent. And the eurozone and international community, instead of being heartened by the bailout, lost confidence, fearing that Greek's woes would also bring down Spain and Portugal, which also have massive fiscal deficits, and possibly Italy and Ireland too.

Financial markets plummeted. The euro, which had been losing value in relation to, say, the US dollar, nosedived.

Like others, Malta will be affected by the uncertainty in the eurozone. A weaker euro will be good for tourism and manufactured exports directed outside the eurozone. Nevertheless, instability favours no one. And if, horror of horrors, the eurozone unravelled, tiny Malta would be in an ugly pickle.

We do not have public debt problems the size or quality of Greece. Not only is our national debt far lower, it is held almost in its entirety by Maltese interests. They will not mount a speculative attack effectively on themselves. The fiscal deficit is much lower too, a third of that of Greece.

Still, we cannot be complacent. We have to reduce the deficit realistically, not through creative accounting, for look what it did to Greece. We have to focus on competitiveness, biting whichever bullets are really necessary, albeit in strict parameters of fairness, and not at the naked cost of the working class. We have to stop evading taxes. We must weed out corruption, as a practical priority and not for political advantage.

We have to become models of probity, for if, because of our failings, our situation deteriorates badly, we too would be lumbered with IMF-type solutions like those imposed on Greece, which could easily lead to slump rather than recovery.

We have considerable leeway still. But we must not waste it through caprice or because we think we are absolutely safe.

We are not.

Nobody is.