Writer Nino Kharatishvili has responded on Facebook to the decision by Georgian Dream to bar Georgian citizens living abroad from participating in parliamentary elections as a result of amendments to the Electoral Code.
“We have not really had a choice for a long time already, but now they have officially taken it away from me and people like me so-called citizens living outside the country’s borders. They even had the fascist Dugin bless this decision, nearly accused us of treason, and cited ‘foreign jurisdiction’ allegedly influencing us as an argument.
So, according to this logic, the Federal Republic of Germany intimidates and blackmails me into not voting for Georgian Dream and I, frightened and terrified that Germany might oppress or deport me, am therefore unable to make an objective decision. Otherwise, of course, I would naturally be a voter of the ‘Georgian Nightmare’!
And with this ‘logic,’ no one asks why the ruling party, during this period of a supposedly booming economy, would not want me meaning myself and my ‘collective emigrant self’ to return to the homeland. Why does it not want my ‘eyes to be opened’ and for the ‘deep state’ to expel me so I can return to a real paradise: with its baobab trees, zebras, and penguins, and live according to ‘indigenous’ traditions? Why should I no longer have to remain trapped in the claws of the ‘perverse’ West?
Or perhaps the mighty arms of our powerful economy simply cannot reach far enough to bring me back and then employ me, so that I would no longer have to care for elderly people abroad for money or work on plantations like a beast, 24/7? Or is paradise reserved only for the oligarch? And the country too?
Perhaps the party of the ‘powerful economy’ has long since rewritten not only the Constitution but also the Gospel, and now intends to secure the country’s place in the ‘Kingdom’ solely through this philosophy:
‘For it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for not even a rich man, but a poor one, to enter the Kingdom of God.’
Or perhaps voters lost under ‘foreign jurisdiction’ will simply be urged to place their hopes in a ‘Heavenly Georgia,’ while the earthly one is fully swallowed by the oligarch?”
Kharatishvili wrote on Facebook.