The Vice President was in Washington, D.C. for an engagement.

At 2:00 pm, she attended the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)-Pertamina Banyan Tree Leadership Forum at the CSIS Conference Room, Rhode Island Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. These are two premier Washington platforms for discussion on vital issues impacting Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific. The CSIS is a bipartisan, non-profit policy research organization dedicated to provide strategic insights and policy solutions to help decision makers chart a course toward a better world.

In her speech, the Vice President emphasized that democracy may not completely answer all of a country’s problems but we must continue to make its principles and values more relevant. “This frustration with liberal democracy is not something we should reject out of hand. In my own experience, interacting with the poor and the marginalized as a human rights lawyer for more than a decade, I can understand where this frustration is coming from. I, too, believe that we could—and that we should—do more in empowering citizens so that their voices would be heard and their needs addressed. We could, and should, make public institutions more responsive and promote good governance. We could, and should, do more in ensuring that democracy leads to more people living better lives.”