Most action will be covert, but Crofts, the SoCom Party, and Andrew III are pushing the nation towards a single-party dictatorship. So there will be some dissenters that the powers at be will want to make examples of.
As for Winters. Kelman Winters was the head of Winters Corp. and the former Minister of Defence under the Whig government. He went missing and reappeared with a super-weapon he was secretly constructing for the Royal Prydanian Navy. His...change of heart...was impossible to keep under wraps, as was his attack that left a smoking crater in the centre of Alaterva.
The SoCom government's made him public enemy number one, but Winters' defection is a hiccup that allowed them to seize power earlier then anticipated. They still have their own agenda that centres on consolidating power and stamping out the left-wing Syndicalist Party and their centres of power. Labour unions and such. So Winters is useful in so far as he provides a good excuse to clamp down on civil liberties. The SoCom government is more then willing to leave his capture to elite units within the military and the SSI (Prydanian secret service) though.