GOVERNMENT SENATOR Hyacinth Bennett has called for a moral rearmament campaign to address what she calls a moral vacuum that has been created in the country.

Bennett, who opened the State of the Nation debate at Gordon House yesterday, said that campaign would be aimed at returning fundamental values to the core of being Jamaican.

"Let us rearm morally and prevent or repair the hole in the heart of many of our young people, in particular," Bennett said.

A reverence for life

The aims of the campaign, Bennett added, would be to develop a reverence for life and to civilise and humanise more of the nation's young, enabling them to, among other things, love and not hate.

"The soul of the nation is in jeopardy, it is in jeopardy from a culture of callousness ... too many have lost or, at best, are operating with a defective moral compass," Bennett added.

The educator, who like Prime Minister Bruce Golding is a former president of the National Democratic Movement (NDM), labelled as disturbing the increasing practice of recording and circulation of sexual acts.

Former prime minister, Edward Seaga, had called for the teaching of character education, and former prime minister, P.J. Patterson, had implemented a values and attitudes programme during the 1990s.

Bennett said politicians should lead from the front in the rearmament campaign.

Meanwhile, Bennett hailed the Bruce Golding-led administration for beginning to fill what she called a moral vacuum. Golding, she said, is "right for the time".