Did the PPP turn a blind eye to drug trafficking for economic and political reasons?

DEAR EDITOR,
There comes a time in a nation’s consciousness when the tough questions must be asked. This is that time.
Given the unchecked and unmitigated rise of drug trafficking in Guyana, along with the clear-cut evidence of the PPP’s inaction on combating the known disease of drug trafficking despite knowing its perils as proven in countries like Colombia and Mexico, concerned Guyanese must ask this question: did the PPP turn a blind eye to drug trafficking and was it done for reasons of perceived and hoped-for economic and political benefits and gains?
There is no evidence of direct involvement of the PPP government in the drug trade. The evidence of the PPP’s inertia on combating the drug trade in Guyana is clear.  No DEA presence allowed in Guyana in 21 years under PPP rule, despite repeated requests from the USA.
To reinforce this point, Mexico and Colombia have DEA offices. British offer for comprehensive security reform and strengthening refused. Major drug traffickers and money launderers convicted and serving sentences abroad (USA) while the PPP has never convicted a major drug trafficker at home. Death of a PPP minister killed by those with linkages to drug cartels never pursued by a formal inquiry. A police force wracked by corruption remains unreformed.
Not even the increased inflows of guns from the drug trade or the escalation of crime in Guyana or the assaults on the country’s sovereignty with illegal airstrips for drug aircraft has roused the PPP from its slothful lethargy to the chilling scourge of the drug trade.
In this day and age with exhibits Mexico and Colombia as grave reminders, no government can legitimately claim it does not know of the savage repercussions and chilling negative effects of a narco-state and how it destroys the fabric of a nation. Yet, the PPP has demonstrated a towering torpor on the drug trafficking disease. Some may point to the inherent immorality of the PPP as the explanation for this horrible phenomenon. However, it does not explain whether there is a basis for this inaction, even in the face of offers of help from some of the most powerful anti-drug agencies in the world.
This again leads us to the question: was the drug trade and money laundering allowed to flourish under the PPP because of something the PPP believed could be gained from it such as economic development, and based on that economic development, political advantage in the form of maintaining political power?
Naturally, any government that can show economic development enjoys a stronger hold on the electorate. So, governments know that achieving economic development inevitably leads to political success. How that economic success is achieved is where the debate begins.
Looking at the economic angle, one must recognize that the unhindered rise of the drug trade in the late 1990s and the height of drug trafficking in Guyana from that period to present, coincide with the worst period of economic performance under PPP rule. Obviously, the PPP stewards with fingers on the economic pulse of the nation intimately knew of this period of economic lassitude. From 1998 to 2012, the economy under the PPP had total annualized GDP growth of 24.9% covering 15 years or average annual GDP growth of 1.66% per year over each of those 15 years. This is shocking, shameful, pathetic and atrocious! And this was a period of massive debt write-offs!
One must also recognize that the PPP’s most powerful driving political propaganda and message to its voting constituency in the past 21 years is to contrast its economic performance to that of the PNC. That messaging along with fear politics has become the backbone of the PPP propaganda to retain its voting base and to keep that base captive. However, that propaganda can only be successful if some measure of economic success is achieved and delivered. So, against this backdrop of the need to deliver economic performance to fit its political agenda and message with the ultimate intent to retain power and to keep its constituency under wraps, the question is again asked whether the PPP considered turning a blind eye to the growing drug trafficking scourge in the hope it would translate to economic benefits which in turn would lead to continued political dominance?
The problem with drug trafficking flourishing in a small economy is that it is an exceptional camouflage and a false hope. For political gamblers hoping to use it for economic and political advantage, it is an excellent cover-up of the real structural deficiencies of the economy.
In such a small economic space occupied by a poor populace, some of whom are driven by materialistic acquisition at all costs due to their lifelong deprivation and poverty, it is easy for government to point to laundered drug trafficking money channeled towards constructing magnificent edifices or starting businesses as evidence of economic growth, development, progress and advancement.
Illegal wealth can be propagandized enough to make it appear as legal wealth. Many fall for it until the other side of drug trafficking; crime, murder, mayhem, economic stagnation in the rest of the economy, inflation, destruction of legitimate businesses, fear, etc, start destroying their fabric of life.
If in the case of Guyana from 1998 to 2012, one is to reduce the annual GDP growth by 25% to account for the contribution of drug trafficking and money laundering, we are left with 1.245% yearly legitimate growth over 15 years. Isn’t it only a government seemingly more concerned with remaining in power than with saving the soul of a nation that would consider turning a blind eye to drug trafficking when faced with these lacerating economic numbers and hellish economic stagnation?
I cannot end this without highlighting the fact that Guyana faced economic devastation under the PNC in the 1980s and drug trafficking was largely unchecked back then, but Guyana did not become a narco-state under the PNC.
M. Maxwell