In the first months after the April 25 coup, the young officers of the Armed Forces Movement stayed very much in the background, preferring to remain as anonymous as possible. This did not mean they had any desire to see the fruits of their victory taken away from them. In a conversation with David Martin of the London Observer, Major Vítor Alves commented pointedly that the problem with the coup of 1926 was that “although the soldiers knew what they did not want they did not know what they did want. They had no program.” In 1974 Major Alves' CCP had already rectified the error of their predecessors. The problem was how the program that existed was to be interpreted and by whom.

The MFA's ambiguous phrases about colonial policy and the “need of a political not military solution” had been, if anything, gross understatements.