I agree that a National Cadet Corp, National Service, call it what you may, is a good thing to instill some discipline, sense of National pride and skills etc, if we had the resources to implement properly. We simply do not. You might as well prescribe it to Haiti for problems and money they have, similar to us.
There simply is not enough money, especially with all the other changes and programs the gov't says it is going to implement. Unless of course, the US is going to be generous to us in order to gain a foothold close enough to the Venezuelan oil fields in order to drain them. I do wish the gov't and the people of Guyana well, but I am afraid that they are in for a rude awakening when very little real change happens. This is so reminiscent of the Barack Obama win in the US, when he promised to be all things to everyone, only to disappoint all of those who looked to his administration for real change when reality hit. And America is the wealthiest country in the world. Guyana is in the neighbourhood of Haiti; destitute poor and in need of real economic change, not meaningless rhetoric. People talk about compulsory service in Israel, Switzerland and a few other countries. Those are wealthy countries in comparison, and do not have the elephant of racial divide that we are still facing. And even if we had the money, the racial divide is a real problem that we have not conquered. I wish that was not the case, but it is. What bothers me is the highfalutin ideas that are being thrown around, including the National Cadet Corp etc. As I said, a nice thing, if you have the money, but an empty gesture if you know it is low on the economic priority ladder. Whether you want to believe it or not, the electorate is usually not patient nor forgiving of what they perceive are empty promises. Ask Barack Obama. This makes me suspect as to whether this gov't has a grasp on reality and whether Granger is not in fact, as one poster noted, a dinosaur stuck in some time warp of his old glory days in the GDF. Note the nexus between him, his deputy Harmon, their days in the GDF, and this National Cadet Corp. True discipline is needed., but more than that, we need ,in the near future, security and economic growth. We simply cannot divert already scarce resources for a national cadet corp. . I suspect that the president brought it up it is his military instincts at play; not Guyana's immediate needs. I sincerely hope he is not big on grandiose form and short on real substance. Remember, military men have been trained to like and do like ceremony. Just saying !!
Fair enough. How do you propose dealing with the hordes of semi-literate, unskilled young males who are trapped in meager slave condition jobs some of whom are manipulated into a life of crime as an exit from this miserable and pointless life?