Posted: Saturday, April 23, 2016. 8:12 p.m. CST
By Aaron Humes: The Belize Progressive Party (BPP) is offering to organize a Belize People’s Brigade, which it says will support the active forces with citizen volunteers to be trained to respond to further 
escalation of aggression by Guatemalan forces.
The offer comes in a party press release issued this morning which condemns the current military provocation by Guatemala and calls on the general public to remain calm, yet vigilant.
The proposed brigade would be morphed from the Belize Territorial Volunteers, whose leader, Wil Maheia, is deputy political leader of the BPP. The Brigade would recruit another 20,000 civilian volunteers.
The BPP says that the intent of this effort is to provide support to our service men and women, so as to demonstrate a collective-national readiness to defend all 8,867 sq. miles of our homeland, Belize.
In conclusion, it calls on the Government of Belize to immediately implement a plan to increase our armed forces to at least 10,000 full-time enlisted men and women, with an additional 20,000 reserves.
Despite regular recruit intakes twice a year, enlistment in the Belize Defence Force stands at about 2,000 personnel.
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