Police commander slammed for criticising officers in public

PNTL Commander Longuinhos Monteiro

East Timor Legal News 17/12/2011 Source: Independente15/12/2011 - As the general commander of PNTL, Longuinhos Monteiro should not publicly discuss the weaknesses of his senior officers, FALINTIL veteran and member of parliamentary Committee B, Faustinho dos Santos, said.

During a swearing-in ceremony for new PNTL unit police commanders on Monday, Mr. Monteiro said current members of the PNTL command unit did not work professionally and lacked of capacity to do their job.

Mr. dos Santos reacted strongly to this declaration. “In the past, when we were in the jungle as FALINTIL [guerilla fighters] we had one method to orient members – when some of officials failed we did not declare this in public because the failure was ours,” he said. He added that in the future the PNTL command should have a good policy to secure confidence inside the command.