AT around 2:00pm on May 17, 2015, on the balcony of the Guyana Parliament, under the unforgiving Guyanese sun, a sea of enthused people gathered to witness the installation of the second coalition government in the nation’s history, the first being in 1964. President David Arthur Granger was sworn in as the eighth Executive President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana. While large swathes of the Guyana population welcomed the installation of this teetotal, disciplinarian and former Brigadier of the Guyana army, there were two groups who were most troubled and extremely worried about this monumental development; the political opposition and the drug underworld. So while the masses were in glee, the movers and shakers of Guyana’s billion-dollar drug trade were in doom and gloom. This industry paid former policemen USD 1,600 per month, eight times more than their Guyana Police Force salaries.

There is no doubt, this billion dollar industry, with its tentacles wrapped around every crevice of the society, was not going to roll over and allow this new paradigm which was completely inimical to their interest, to just prevail without intervention. Please allow this writer to note, in no way it is being suggested that the drug trade ended when the coalition government assumed office. It is being argued that access and control of the state apparatus ended with the installation of this new government of national unity.

State interventions brought about by the change in government were swift and sweeping. In October 2016, speaking on a weekly televised program, the head of state opined grandiloquently, “…as long as drugs keep coming into this country, it will be difficult to control crime.” This shot across the bows to the perpetrators of the white illicit substance did not start and end with mere statesman’s rhetoric. Numerous seizures of drugs on air, land and sea ensued. There was a change of leadership at the Customs Anti-narcotic Unit (CANU) after a Commission of Inquiry Report was submitted on the operations of this entity. Increased scrutiny of the hinterland areas to prevent the surreptitious landing of planes filled with dirty money and kilos. The squeeze on the narco-industry was on.

As a consequence, the effects of this started to manifest in the streets, businesses and homes of the land of many waters. The streets cried, ‘money ain’t flowing’. Businesses that owed their existence to the ‘white lady’, laid off workers and some homes in the inner city that depended on the proceeds from the illicit trade felt the pinch. The political opposition seized upon the opportunity, the headlines screamed, ‘Guyana in economic decline’. Most Guyanese were surprised at the extent the society had become dependent on the trade. The transition to a law and order society was not going to be easy, the government cautioned much to the chagrin of an impatient population grown accustomed to ‘fast dollars’.

The aforementioned was compounded when the drug empire decided to strike back. Hitting at the heart of the drug industry was akin to the proverbial ‘raising of the red ants nest’. The hoarding of US currency commenced, the Central Bank had to introduce austere measures. It must be noted; the Financial Times and the Economist both estimated in 1989 that the parallel market carried out between US$50 million and US$100 million worth of business annually. By the higher estimate, the parallel economy was about one-third the size of the official economy. Be that as it may, the immediate and mundane economic muscles of the drug empire began to flex to put the new anti-drug dealers administration in a vice grip. This resistance was not restricted to economic sabotage; it metamorphosed into the specter of consideration of murder, nay, assassination. According to the Commission of Inquiry into the Assassination of the President of Guyana Report, the organisation to kill the President was commenced because “…President David Granger would disrupt their way of life”.