UN General Assembly
2004

entered a new era. The peoples of the whole world, as referred to in the Charter of the United Nations, demand a new contract between the governed and those who govern. The three classic powers of Montesquieu are no longer the only ones in the government of the peoples. Those who believe so are lost in time. There is nothing worse than erring in our perception of reality. There are powers that are not as they were and others that Montesquieu, Locke and the drafters of liberal revolutions could not know of, because they did not exist or because, over time, they have changed configuration. One need only think of the power of the media over people’s lives today. Our peoples want to feel strength in the present and faith in the future. For that reason, I shall end my address the way I began: stressing the indispensability and the centrality of the United Nations in the daily 35 lives of free and sovereign nations. We belong to an Organization that has restored hope to many peoples