Granger discusses ‘One Nation’ concept with military officers

Aug 08, 2014 News

Leader of the People’s National Congress Reform and Leader of the Opposition, Brigadier (Ret’d) David Granger, on Thursday, last, took the ‘One Nation’ message to Guyana Defence Force officers. Granger addressed mid-career Air Corps, Coast Guard and Ground Forces military officers attending the Senior Command and Staff Course.

GDF officers making notes during the address by Opposition Leader, Brig. (ret’d) David Granger (at far left)

Granger highlighted five challenges – National Unity, National Security, Economic viability, Educational apartheid and Good Governance – facing Guyana. He suggested that the military officers should focus on them as they embarked on a new phase of their careers.
Granger told the officers that Guyana was still not yet a unified nation. He said the nation could not progress without a greater degree of unity and this was the basis for his repeated call for ‘One Nation.’
On the challenge of national security, while recounting the Surinamese Navy’s intrusion into Guyana’s sea space in 2000, he expressed alarm over the incursion of a Venezuela Navy Frigate into Guyana’s waters in October 2013. He said that the threats to national and public security, resulting from porous borders and sea space and the lack of resources for the Guyana Police Force, the Guyana Defence Force and the Coast Guard, were major problems.
Extreme poverty was a challenge to economic viability, Granger said. He lamented that the economic development of many regions continued to be held back because of poor infrastructure.
He opined that ‘Education apartheid’ was also becoming evident, and said that despite celebrating the performance of a few brilliant high-performers at the NGSA and CSEC on the one hand, there were also about 7,000 dropouts from primary and secondary schools countrywide every year on the other hand. Granger told the officers that such a large number of poorly educated youths was bound to impact immediately on employment and, in the longer term, on the economy.