Appointed by the Government as Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces (CEMFGA), General José Nunes da Fonseca was born in Mafra, in 1961. Son of a sergeant, he soon joined the Army Pupils. Therefore, when he entered the Military Academy in 1979, he was already a veteran and it wasn’t hard for him to stand out, being the best student in the course. Those who know him say he is more of a scholar than an operative. As his curriculum shows: he graduated in Military Sciences (Engineering) and got a Master’s degree in Military Engineering.
Operationally, only two missions are known to him: the first in the SFOR (NATO Stabilization Force), in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1998/99, as Operations Officer at the Multinational Division Headquarters Southeast, and the second in the KFOR (NATO Force in Kosovo), in the 1st half of 2011, as commanding general of the operation’s Logistics Force (Joint Logistics Support Group).
After returning to Portugal, the rest of his career was spent in the GNR. He served as commander of the Coastal Control Unit between 2013 and 2017, until he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Army, and the only restructuring attributed to him was the transformation of the uniforms of the troops. A general from his Academy days profiled him: “He’s not a person of drive, he doesn’t mess with the status quo and he doesn’t motivate his subordinates. Another compagnon de route is of the same opinion: “He has no emotional intelligence, he is weak in leadership. I bet he is not the man António Costa wanted in place, but he had to swallow the suggestion of the President of the Republic because he is so politically weakened.” “That became clear when, in 2021, when the President decreed the renewal of his mandate.” As a matter of fact, it is common knowledge that “Vice Admiral Guerra Pereira was in charge of the army”. He was made a defendant by the Public Prosecutor’s Office for suspected cover-up of a weapons theft that occurred four years ago within the Portuguese expeditionary corps integrated in the UN international peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (CAR). The theft of weapons from the Portuguese Army detachment, a set of 9mm Walther pistols (only used by police and military forces and that reach high values on the black market), occurred in January 2019 in a MINUSCA (United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Mission for the Stabilization of the Central African Republic) camp. And it was not the only case: also in another mission of paratroopers in that country, weapons disappeared without anyone being held accountable by the CEME.
But what causes the most astonishment in military circles is the fact that the Prime Minister is bringing in a man who opposed the government’s reform of the Armed Forces’ superior structure, approved by the Council of Ministers. Nunes da Fonseca even stated, during a parliamentary hearing, that there were “inconsistencies, competence collisions, lapses and omissions”. However, now he will have to set the restructuring in motion.
