Why Gota’s Citizenship Matters
An American Presidential scandal, in Sri Lanka
Here’s how I got my dual citizenship. First I was born, which was my main contribution. Then my dad went to the Embassy to register my birth. My mother couldn’t because the law was sexist until very recently. I carried this letter around for 21 years.
As an adult, we took this letter to the Department, did more paperwork, paid money and waited for months. Then I got my dual citizenship certificate, yay!
Then I lost it.
This lets you know another part of the process.
When I went back to the Department, they didn’t issue another certificate. They gave me a letter saying that they had my record on file. I could not, for example, tweet a photo of my certificate because that would be stupid. You have to check with the Department.
The whole thing was a stupid, long process but I did it because I’m an adult.
Here’s how Gotabaya Rajapaksa got his dual citizenship.
He didn’t.
Numerous court cases and journalists have looked for Gota’s dual citizenship records and they’re not there. They found a lot of tampering, but none of it competent. He’s not a dual citizen. There’s also no record of him renouncing his American citizenship. He’s still American.
We have an American running for President of Sri Lanka. This is hilarious, coming from a nationalist, law-and-order candidate, and also wrong. Gota’s not even a national, and he can’t even get his own paperwork in order.
Literally every other person just does the paperwork, as annoying and slow as it is, because we’re adults. Gota’s just a lazy fraud, and he’s trying to tell us he’s a technocrat, lol. He can’t even fill out a form. He can’t even forge a form. He was the one signing the damn documents, and he still couldn’t do it. Gota was just lazy, and then the lies started piling up, and now he’s here.
Disciplined society my ass.
So What
But let’s say you don’t care. Gota helped win the war, he’s a patriotic Sri Lankan, paperwork be damned.
How would Gota treat you and me?
Well, when he was Defence Secretary he banned dual citizenship for everyone else. This is a bit like a thief breaking into your house and changing the locks. Literally, an American fraud was telling people they couldn’t become Sri Lankan.
For four years, thousands of decent people couldn’t live, work, or start lives in Sri Lanka because of him. Hundreds of children born at that time still can’t. The process now takes years and costs lakhs, because of roadblocks him and his brother put up. My wife has been applying for dual for our entire marriage because of this mess, and we have two kids already.
So it’s not just a matter of his personal paperwork, this is about how Gota treated and would treat Sri Lankans.
That’s why Gota’s citizenship matters. It goes back to who he is. He’s been campaigning as a law-and-order candidate, but that’s a joke. There’s no law, and the order is just Rajapaksas at the top, grifters in the middle, suckers under the boot. If you’re reading this and thinking, then you’re a sucker.
This citizenship issue is not some technicality. This is how he’d govern. Certain people will be above the law — free to steal, murder, or rape — and certain people will be beneath contempt — like minorities, journalists, the poor, and all decent hard working people that follow the rules.
What makes you think a candidate that can’t follow the law is going to follow the law as President? He literally doesn’t know how, it’s completely foreign that the rules would apply to him. I guess he’s American like that.
This is why Gota’s citizenship matters. The question isn’t whether you want to vote for someone that broke the rules. It’s whether you want to live in a country where rules matter at all.
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