ABSTRACT
Within the context of present day Guyanese society, the idea of politics and the notion of corruption are interchangeable. They address one and the same issue. To develop an analytic understanding of one requires a cognizance of the other. The dominant political processes in the society are corruptible and corrupted. The Knapp Commission report on police corruption placed corrupt policemen into two categories: "grass eaters" and "meat eaters." Police who take payoffs are generally "grass eaters" in that they do not agressively pursue corruption payments. Police officers form part of the emergent petit bourgeois bureaucratic middle class who are seeking to equilibrate the disparity in status between their official position and their economic standing in the society. The most fundamental imperatives of societies emerging from colonial domination are the establishment and maintenance of a system of indigenous rule. Establishing a system of indigenous rule to replace the colonial state is a prerequisite for nation-building and meaningful economic development.
