Political Quotes

“in early 2011, I had one of the more unusual experiences of my Senate career. I traveled back in time, from a free and democratic Lithuania to a closed and totalitarian Belarus. The trip was less than 3 hours, but it took me back to a dark past. You see, Belarus is the last dictatorship in Europe. But like many dictatorships, it claims to be a democracy. In December 2010, it held what was billed as a Presidential election. The victor in that rigged contest was a heavy by the name of Alexander Lukashenko. His first act, after seizing the Presidency, was to jail all of those who were bold enough to run against him. Months later, I drove from Vilnius to Minsk to meet with the family members of those jailed candidates, who had been arrested by Belarus security services still called the KGB. Mind you, the original KGB was dissolved more than three decades ago. That tells you all you need to know about how much the Belarusian Government has evolved since the fall of the Soviet Union. My meeting with those family members was sobering, and it is an encounter I will never forget. Fortunately, over time, we were able to see the release of all these brave Belarusians, but not because Alexander Lukashenko had a sudden change of heart. He is still the same authoritarian thug he has always been. The world was reminded of that a year ago, when another sham election was held in Belarus. True to form, Lukashenko was reelected in that rigged contest.…”