Stephen Harper Quotes
Whether Canada ends up as o-ne national government or two national governments or several national governments, or some other kind of arrangement is, quite frankly, secondary in my opinion.
Harper, Stephen. "Our Benign Dictatorship." Speech to the Council for National Policy. Montreal, June 1997.
There was huge pressure on the central government to decentralize as they held all the power in Indonesian society. However, if they devolved power to the Provinces (States), many of them could be large enough and independent enough to secede and become an independent country as East Timor had done. So the Indonesian power structure bypassed the Provincial governments and devolved power directly to the local governments, none of which was independent enough to go it alone. The desired objective was met—no more secessions. However, there was no one to worry about regional and national issues and problems as the politicians who had power were all local. The country was becoming non-functional in many ways.
The custom during the civil war was that dead soldiers would be buried in groups by the state they came from. The chaplain, after a particularly bloody battle, has asked if he should separate the bodies by state.
Stephen Joseph Harper PC CC is a Canadian politician who served as the prime minister of Canada from 2006 to 2015, the 22nd since Confederation. Harper won three mandates during his nearly decade-long tenure, and is the first and only prime minister to come from the modern-day Conservative Party of Canada, serving as the party's first leader from 2004 to 2015.
