Political Quotes

“I have forever, I think, seared in my mind more than any of the other stops along the way during our visit in that troubled region, the visions of what happened in Indonesia. It has been already mentioned on the floor of this Chamber that this is a huge country. It is the fourth most populous in the world. It has the largest Muslim population. It is spread out over 15,000 islands, most of which are inhabited, but two statistics loom large in my mind: One is that of this vast population, over half are now at or below the Indonesian poverty level and that in this context they have moved forward to move from three political parties to over 140, and in three short months they are going to attempt without any real election infrastructure to administer their first democratic election in over 40 years. It is a country that is troubled on several levels. The gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) mentioned the tragedy of East Timor, where over 200,000 people have been killed in senseless violence in the last 25 years.”