Socially, Guyana is still straggled by ethnic tensions between its Indo and Afro populations, which inform political allegiance. A series of high-profile crimes and massacres have shocked the nation over the last five years, events that the PPP has appeared powerless to influence. The high murder rate and widespread poverty continue to encourage migration overseas, a hugely damaging brain drain illustrated by the flight of young teachers. The law now requires two years of local teaching before they can leave, but there are nonetheless serious doubts over the quality of basic education.
Many of Guyana’s social problems can be traced back to the economic mismanagement that followed the Cold War era, with the painful process of privatization failing to bring the ‘trickle down’ that economic liberalization promised. The loss of preferential access to European markets was significant, though Jagdeo did secure a better deal from the Economic Partnership Agreement with the EU in 2008, as well as gaining a $700-million multilateral debt write-off. For the urban poor, income is more likely to come from relatives overseas, from alliances with the growing Brazilian informal mining community, or from the highly significant transnational cocaine trade and associated money laundering.
