يحاول ذهب - حر

Selective use of PTA

April 19, 2025

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The Island

Governments with steamroller majorities become impervious to reasoning.

Blinded by the arrogance of power, they dig their own political graves. This, we have witnessed on numerous occasions in this country. When ensconced in power, politicians practise the exact opposite of what they preach during their election campaigns.

The JVP-led NPP government finds itself in an unenviable position. It has had some arrests made under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which it used to condemn as a repressive law and pledged to scrap as a national priority. The JVP leaders who were arrested and detained in the late 1980s under the PTA must know what it is like to be held under that draconian law.

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