IT was in the early 80s that I began to develop my artistic talents. Back then, one could buy a voucher for US$27 from Barclays Bank, now GBTI, on Water and Robb Streets. This would enable the purchase of necessary training books and tools of the trade.
This was the age of ‘suitcase trading’, and I had a reasonable amount of relatives and friends involved in it. It was also the advent of Rastafari in Guyana, and so, who weren’t trading in clothing, jewellery or merchandise were trading in marijuana. The smugglers of scarce items such as flour were a separate category.

My interest in graphic arts development was viewed in wonderment; some relatives even predicted that I was going to end up mad. This was not such an unreasonable assessment of the situation, judging from the new money that could have been made from the afore-mentioned ventures. Even I, at times, wondered if something was indeed wrong with my passion in comparison with the economic fruit that was being reaped all around me.
It was a period that saw the moving away from the traditional cottage industries into the new life-skills, avant-garde ‘runnings’ that for many seemed a practical way out of the drudgery of semi-literate, untrained existence with a dismal horizon before them.
Most of South Georgetown and other areas had once again become overcrowded, after the South Ruimveldt housing push had declined. With the Desmond Hoyte era, much of the ‘runnings’ remained, but with his push into building a viable private sector, a new shape of economics was emerging; slowly, jobs were being created, and a mushrooming of small businesses was evident.

NEW FRONTEIRS
Even in that period, the necessary management of the Police Force was weak; rather than solve crimes, they opted for extra-judicial killings. And the much-needed opening of new economic frontiers was not touted. A new undercurrent of ‘runnings’ was rising to the surface; that of the cocaine and ‘back-track’ trade that would envelope businessmen and senior members of the Police Force.
Take a trip back down memory lane to ‘The Baldeo Tapes’ and ‘The Gold Scam’. The first exposed the commissioning of a secret airstrip that involved senior law enforcement officers. Under the Hoyte administration, these new threats were met with the kind of hostility they justly deserved, though not seriously thought out; for instance, the three-year sentence for marijuana possession was not balanced by education.

By the late 80s, we had our first addicts sleeping on the streets; but nothing could prepare us for the turn-a-blind-eye consensus that would emerge after the PPP came to power and fell short of sustaining the programmes of the Hoyte years.
With the economy fast declining, police killings growing out of proportion, and Guyana now an official narco-conduit nation, a new criminal business class emerged, with a government ready to negotiate with them. Thus, the worse era in the modern history of this country was upon us. The jail-break crime spree and insurrection that began in 2002 expanded the stage for all to see; and we saw in vivid colour.

ALL-TIME LOW
Now, many of the criminals of 2016 were between four to 12 years old back in 2000. It cannot be disputed that the Bharat Jagdeo/Roger Khan era was the most irresponsible and callously lawless that Guyana had ever sunk to.
The nation gazed dumbstruck at Channel 28 as ‘Bumbalay’ Bacchus, when the fatal tide was turned against him, told the nation: “The president seh; I ent know which president he is; he seh that we shouldn’t throw the bodies all over the place.” That was in reference to the operations of the ‘Gajraj Death Squad’ and the ‘Phantom’ death squad militias loyal to Roger Khan, who eventually told the public that he was fighting crime for the State. Such delusional logic imposed itself on the consciousness of the nation. The State had lost its way, or it did not understand its mandate, for joining a political party does not build character or initiate enlightenment.

Every politically connected official or businessman in that period under the PPP felt that they had to employ two or three street thugs from the Roger Khan pool, or those who are his current ‘post-heirs’ as their guards.
Their money-laundering schemes took them into the “gold bush” (where, presently, three shady characters are bullying miners from their small lands), and unprecedented violence had become the custom of the day. When not sponsoring raids, they broke the rules, one of the results of which are the frequent cave-ins in the gold-mining industry that has caused so many deaths.
The social and political lawlessness pervaded every aspect of this nation; public servants went to work in many ministries to ‘hustle’ or to create ‘runnings’; the criminal state was cultivated.
The current administration will be affected by its own pathological converts to the machinitions of the criminal State, but I am sure that they will act, and not be found wanting. A young street hustler once remarked: “I like Jagdeo dem, ‘cause we could’a sell drugs and hustle; and people would call de police fuh we, ‘cause we could do works fuh dem.”

THE DHARAMLALL SAGA
That a PPP parliamentarian of the least favourable public ilk as Nigel Dharamlall could express in public, with vulgar temerity, that the president should “Give orders to the police to kill those mofos /thieves… stop pardoning them…” tells me that this particular character considers himself the future of the PPP; his lack of culture, callous disrespect and past performance of buffoonery speaks volumes of what we must protect the future of this country from.
Perhaps the State culture that commanded the execution of wanted-man, ‘Fine-Man’ Rawlings’ sister, though she had nothing to do with her brother’s savagery, suits Dharamlall to a ‘T’, for names were called in that incident; political names. Other wanted criminals’ relatives were also murdered. From this man’s diatribes, that group within the opposition cannot be viewed or expected to contribute to Guyana in civilised terms; nor must the evidence of past criminal deeds be sabotaged by their criminal collaborators still in the system, or by the newly recruited.
The generation of criminals terrorising our lives today are products of the environment that raised them; many of them were possible guards of the 400 to 700 persons of interest to the international law enforcement body linked to money laundering, created in the regime Dharamlall served, and is accustomed to.

These young men and their associates were not as stupid as their employers thought; they listened to conversations and observed visitors. They possess a pool of information. We must remember that many criminals were sworn in as rural constables, and issued with firearms to serve the government-linked drug cartel militias. That drug abuse [marijuana, cocaine and alcohol] is also linked to crime, unemployment and the machismo rush to be in the image forefront also drives the criminal culture, but the pervading impetus is the extreme accommodation of lawlessness they grew up socially.
The prisons will have to be transformed to an institution of commercial production. It has worked elsewhere; it can work in Guyana. The State death squad was taken to the hilt in Guyana by the PPP, and it has not worked.