Caetano's government had begun the program (which included several other reforms) in order to increase the number of officials employed against the African insurgencies, and at the same time cut down military costs to alleviate an already overburdened government budget. Thus, the group of revolutionary military insurgents started as a military professional class protest of Portuguese Armed Forces captains against a decree law: the "Dec. Lei nº 353/73" of 1973, organizing themselves in a loosely allied group known as the Movement of the Armed Forces (MFA).