Opposition parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa on Friday accused the National People’s Power (NPP) government of misleading Tamil youth in the north for votes before turning around to arrest a young Tamil artist under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, EconomyNext reported.

The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) MP issued the statement after the arrest and remand of a 24-year-old singer from Kilinochchi over two songs allegedly glorifying the banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at a Chavakachcheri concert on 31 May. The singer was produced before the Chavakachcheri Magistrate’s Court on 3 June and remanded until 17 June.

“During the last Local Government election campaign in the north, NPP-linked propaganda openly glorified the LTTE for political gain,” Rajapaksa said, citing a campaign song shared by NPP parliamentarians that he said had promoted a harbour named after Velupillai Parvathi Amma — the mother of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran — a statue of Prabhakaran, and claims that “the ideology of the National Leader and Anura Kumara Dissanayake are one and the same.”

“Today, the same government is arresting a young Tamil artist under the PTA over alleged LTTE-related content,” Rajapaksa said. “So, who misled the youth in the North? It was the NPP, driven by its desire to secure Tamil nationalist votes.”

He called the pattern “a dangerous double standard in politics: one narrative for the North and East and another for the South”, and said the young artist was a victim of the government’s own irresponsible political agenda. The MP urged that Tamil youth and all youth in the country must not continue to be misled by opportunistic politics.

Newswire had earlier carried a similar Rajapaksa statement on Thursday in which he said a Jaffna District NPP MP had openly shared LTTE-themed songs on social media without consequence, asking: “Where were the Police then? Where was the PTA then?” He acknowledged that the LTTE remains a banned terrorist organisation and that he does not support anyone glorifying it, but said accountability must apply equally.

Rajapaksa’s intervention is the first sustained opposition critique of the PTA from within the SLPP since the NPP came to power. It joins parallel criticism from Sarvajana Balaya MP Dilith Jayaweera, who on Friday called the government’s broader use of detention orders the most serious PTA abuse in Sri Lanka’s history. The NPP campaigned in opposition on a pledge not to use the PTA, citing the law’s history of misuse.

Sources: EconomyNext · Newswire.