Military and IL “shoot” Nuno Melo and criticize troops for criminals | Armed forces

After stating that military service could be an alternative for young people who commit petty crimes instead of being placed in institutions, the Minister of State and Defense, Nuno Melo, is under fire. Speaking to Rádio Renascença, the president of the National Association of Sergeants, António Lima Coelho, considered that the idea presented by the government official this weekend is “an unserious way” of treating the Armed Forces and compares the idea of ​​Nuno Melo to that of Vladimir Putin, when he sent prisoners to the War in Ukraine. On the party side, the Liberal Initiative (IL) has already made it known that it will urgently call the minister to Parliament to “provide explanations about the unspeakable intention of having petty criminals do military service”.

After saying that compulsory military service is not being considered – but only because there are no political conditions, Nuno Melo stated that the Government would be studying ways to attract more young people to the Armed Forces and that military service could be an alternative to young people who commit petty crimes, instead of being placed in institutions that, “in most cases, only function as a school of crime for life”, he said.

On the social network of a possibility that the Government is actually studying”. Rui Rocha states that the Armed Forces “must be treated with dignity” and argues that “the way forward is not to convert them into a reformatory for small criminals”.

Therefore, IL wants to know what structural solutions Luís Montenegro’s executive is “considering”, demanding clarification from Nuno Melo and the Minister of Internal Administration, Margarida Blasco, “in order to clarify the Government’s commitment to the use of joining the Armed Forces as a penalty and, if so, under what terms is this solution being considered”, reads the request for an urgent hearing sent to PÚBLICO.

In turn, António Lima Coelho compares the Minister of State and Defense’s proposal with Vladimir Putin’s regime, when he decided to recruit, in Russian prisons, volunteers for the War in Ukraine. “This idea reminds me a little of Mr Putin’s idea, when picking up prisoners from prisons, to send them to the front,” he told Renascença. “The Armed Forces are not a correctional institution, nor an institution of social reintegration. Not so long ago, to join the Armed Forces it was necessary to have an absolutely clean criminal record. Now, this idea is a peregrine idea that doesn’t make any sense. The important thing is to understand what Armed Forces we want to build”, he states.

What does the Government program say?

In the program that led to votes, but also in the document that it delivered to the Assembly of the Republic, the Government does not make any reference to the implementation of mandatory military service. In the chapter dedicated to the Armed Forces, however, we read the commitment to “study other forms of voluntary recruitment“, without explaining which ones.

The program is also committed to investing in “significant improvement in salary conditions in general and, in particular, in the category of enlisted personnel, to guarantee the recruitment of volunteers necessary to reach the authorized numbers“. Added to this is the objective of “seeking to reinforce incentives for contracted military personnel”.