TEKS PIDATO PRESIDEN SOEKARNO DI KONGRES AMERIKA SERIKAT 17 MEI 1956
“… We have our feet on the road to democracy, and we have made a good start. But we will not deceive ourselves with the false illusion that we have traversed the full extent of the road to democracy, if indeed any end there be.
The secret ballot, the free press, the freedom of belief, the votings in parliaments – these are all merely expressions of democracy. Freedom of expression has a guardian in a certain measure of prosperity, the achievement of freedom from want.
For us then, democratic principles are not simply an aim. The expression of desire inherent in human nature, they are also a means of providing our people with reasonable standard of living. The freedom of expression and the freedom of wants are indivisible, two interdependent souls in our body.
As with all other freedoms, freedom of expression is no absolute, its indiscriminate and unrestrained exercise could hamper harmonious growth of other freedoms, could hamper the harmonious growth from want, and thus sow the seed for the destruction of the fundamentals of human freedom itself…
… To the famished man democracy can never be more than a slogan. What can a vote mean to a woman worn out by toll, whose children fret and all with the fever of malaria? Democracy is not merely government by the people, democracy is also government for the people …”
