Singapore opposition stalwart JB Jeyaretnam dies

SINGAPORE: Veteran opposition politician J.B. Jeyaretam died of heart failure early on Tuesday morning. He was 82.

The pugnacious former head of the Workers’ Party, who recently formed the Reform Party, died at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, said his close friend and chairman of Mr Jeyaretnam’s new political party.

He leaves behind two sons, Kenneth and Philip.

He was the first opposition member to break the ruling People’s action Party’s grip on Parliament 27 years ago.

He was unable to contest the 2006 general election after he was made bankrupt in 2001 for failing to pay S$265,000 in defamation damages to then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong.

He was discharged from bankruptcy in May last year.

Jeyaretnam made his final political comeback earlier this year.

He left the Workers’ Party after years at its helm and was succeeded by Mr Low Thia Khiang, who is now MP for Hougang.

When he broke the PAP’s 15-year monopoly of the Parliament in 1981, most of today’s young Singaporeans were not even born yet.

After losing his parliamentary seat in 1986 for making a false declaration of the WP accounts and being jailed for a month and fined S$5,000, he spent most of the last two decades battling outside the legislature.

Of the five General Elections since then, he has contested only once, in 1997.

He finished as top loser through the bruising Cheng San GRC bout, earning 45.2% of the valid votes.

That brought him back into the House as a Non-Constituency MP, a brief tenure that ended in 2001, when he was declared a bankrupt for failing to pay after losing a defamation suit against five Indian People’s Action Party MPs, among others.

When he left his 30-year-long WP vehicle in that same year, after accusing his successor Low of not helping him clear his debts, he was effectively banished to the margins of the opposition scene here. -- The Straits Times / ANN

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