Summary: Mon Mothma sees a thousand faces representing 15 trillion souls, and she wonders how one woman can stand in the path of a useless war.
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The Senate floor is really a cylinder, and she has hated it since the very moment she took the podium as the Senator of Chandrila. It was both efficient and majestic and, to Mon Mothma, it was utterly undemocratic. No matter where she was, there was always someone higher than her and always someone lower than her. She couldn't stand the feeling of being a class traitor.
Unfortunately, her opinion of the Senate architecture was in the minority. Everyone else seemed perfectly enamored of the transparasteel and repulsor-pod monstrosity. Oddly enough, the only people who seem to mind it are the sort of anti-bureaucracy people who were on her end of the political spectrum. Most of them joined the Separatist movement. The few who didn't have to deal with bomb threats and poisonings and the constant, never-ending cries of 'traitor'.
The things Mon Mothma does for the sake of unity…
Today, she is going to do something that could get her thrown in jail by Palpatine's pet clones. She is going to ask that diplomacy, rather than force, be used to settle their differences and keep the Republic together. He will not like it. Most of the Senate will not like it. But she is the duly elected representative of her people, and this is her people's will. Most of the senators wouldn't do this, mostly because it's rare to find an actual democracy in the powerful Core planets. Alderaan, for example, has a noble oligarchy that runs the planet. Representatives are chosen in some assembly, and this time it's some hypocrite named Bail. For a man who professes to be a pacifist, he seems awfully concerned with how much of the GDP is allocated to the military… And of course, the Nabooians didn't even have that semblance of democracy. Their ninny of a queen had gotten Palpatine in as Chancellor, and as a reward, was given the senatorship…
She was elected, and she speaks for the people. Surely they cannot jail her for that?
Her podium floats to the exact center of the cylinder, and she feels thousands of eyes press on her from above and below. Above her, somewhere, is Bel Iblis, who is an ally if not a friend. And below her are the Jedi, who come to every Senate meeting now as if to quiet any opposition to this war.
And then, she sees Palpatine. He's watching her with a smile on his lips, and she feels a shiver prickle down her spine. A quote from a book rises into her head. Anarchy is a political vacuum. When there is a vacuum, someone strong will rise to take the place of leader. She realizes, suddenly, that the Republic is a vacuum, and Palpatine – and Palpatine's vision – are going to take it's place. The only visionary in this place is a man who wants power. Everyone else is just here because it is traditional to do so, expected.
For a moment, Mon Mothma wishes she had lived in the beginning of the Republic, when people actually believed in something.
She straightens her spine defiantly, lifting her chin and giving Palpatine stare for stare.
And then she begins to speak.
"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
-Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address