"The Armed Forces are not a correctional facility, nor are they a social reintegration institution. (...) It is a strange, absurd idea, it makes no sense at all and, on the contrary, it shows some disrespect for the Armed Forces", defended Sergeant Lima Coelho, president of the National Association of Sergeants (ANS), in statements to the Lusa agency.

The reaction comes after the Minister of Defense, Nuno Melo, defended last weekend, in Aveiro, that military service could be an alternative for young people who commit minor crimes instead of being placed in institutions that, "in most cases, only work as a school of crime for life", an idea supported by the Minister of Internal Administration, Margarida Blasco.

Sergeant Lima Coelho stressed that to join the Armed Forces it is necessary to have a "clean criminal record" and warned that the military "are the ones who hold the lethal means for the military defense of the Republic".

"This is not a school for poorly educated people and it cannot be", he warned. The sergeant said that "it would be interesting to see if the Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, agrees with this idea, after Margarida Blasco said that Nuno Melo "spoke on behalf of the entire Government".

In the same vein, the president of the Association of Officers of the Armed Forces (AOFA), Colonel António Mota, considered that the possibility raised "is a total nonsense" and "a vision of someone who has no idea" of what the military ranks are, and challenged the Minister of Internal Administration.

"I would even challenge her: why not send the delinquents to the GNR and the PSP? In addition to joining the Armed Forces, they can also join the GNR and the PSP. And since it is a compact idea of the Government, I would even tell the Minister of Justice that delinquents can become prison guards", he said ironically, in statements to Lusa.

Colonel António Mota said that the military associations are preparing a national meeting, in Lisbon, with a date to be set, to discuss the current problems of the Armed Forces and regretted that the Minister of Defense has not yet responded to the request for an audience made immediately after the inauguration of the PSD/CDS-PP minority government.

"We are literally playing around with very serious and grave situations of national sovereignty", he warned.

For the Association of Enlisted Personnel (AP), Corporal Paulo Amaral considered the idea "totally absurd, that it does not make sense to anyone".

"It would not even make sense to anyone with common sense to have the idea of placing the Armed Forces as an 'upgrade' of a social reintegration center", he said.

Paulo Amaral stressed that it is not this type of idea that will be "the panacea for the recruitment of young people in the Armed Forces", recalling the importance of valuing the salaries of the military.

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