Associations prefer career enhancement to returning from Mandatory Military Service

This Monday, military associations defended the valorization of careers as a way of resolving the current personnel crisis in the Armed Forces, instead of a possible reintroduction of Mandatory Military Service.

Speaking to the Lusa agency, Colonel António Mota, president of the Association of Armed Forces Officers (AOFA), argued that, at a time when military service is already “practically all professional”, the priority is to “look at the remuneration conditions , careers, support during illness and solving these problems”.

“This is what will cause retention and recruitment to increase significantly”, he replied, when asked about the possibility of studying the reintroduction of the Mandatory Military Service (SMO), a hypothesis recently defended by the military chiefs of the Navy, Admiral Gouveia e Melo, and from the Army, General Mendes Ferrão.

Stressing that AOFA does not have a closed position on the subject, and that the way in which this possible service would take place would have to be analyzed, the colonel stated that the association “is against it from the outset” and warned of the “colossal expenses” that would be concerned with a regular turnover of recruits.

The colonel also warned that a recruit needs time to acquire knowledge and become operational, which would require “at least a year as a recruit”.

“In operational terms, people would be used for two months or three. (…) The number of staff was inflated, but in a fallacy because it is not the same thing to have an operational person for three months or six months, or to have one who It belongs to the paintings”, he warned.

In the same vein, the president of the National Association of Sergeants (ANS), António Lima Coelho, asked that this debate “not serve to divert the focus of attention from the real, urgent problems that require an immediate solution. And that any discussion about any hypothetical SMO will not resolve anything concretely”.

The sergeant questioned why this discussion arose now, and not during the electoral campaign period for the legislative elections, and left questions about the model for a possible return to mandatory military service.

“If it’s what was in force at the beginning of the 2000s, four or six months, it doesn’t make any sense. If it’s a model identical to what existed at the time of the Colonial War, it doesn’t make any sense. If it’s just any idea to cover holes or in order not to fail to fulfill the privileges or perks that some superior structures have, and for that they need squares, it also doesn’t make sense”, he considered.

The official defended military service “or any other service that brings citizens the idea of ​​serving the country and not of serving the country”. However, he stressed that this is not the time for a debate that should not be done “on the fly” and that should involve the whole of society, not just the military.

Corporal Major Paulo Amaral, from the Association of Soldiers (AP), also warned that this discussion “cannot make us forget” issues such as improving military salaries, living conditions in units or enhancing careers.

The person in charge expressed doubts about whether a possible return of the SMO would solve the personnel crisis that this area of ​​sovereignty is going through and was in favor of a model that instills in younger people “the spirit of National Defense and the Armed Forces”.

In the radio debate, as part of the campaign for the March legislative elections, about a month ago, the president of the PSD and prime minister-designate, Luís Montenegro, stated that the party did not put “the return of the SMO on the table” , but rather “a system of incentives” for recruitment.

In the same vein, the secretary general of the PS, Pedro Nuno Santos, rejected the return of Mandatory Military Service, defending the attractiveness of a military career.

Mandatory Military Service ended in 2004. Its end was approved in 1999, by an executive led by the socialist António Guterres, establishing a transition period of four years.

The transition to professionalization was completed in September 2004, two months before the scheduled date, November 19, with centrist Paulo Portas as Minister of Defense.