Singabloodypore

In memoriam

Mr JB Jeyaretnam

Speakers Corner
Saturday, October 4
6.30pm - 10pm


Bring flowers & candles
Wear black
No speeches

(Clark Quay MRT Station, Exit A)

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Facebook: In Memory of JB Jeyaretnam

Sad, sad news... I only learnt of the news while flying home last night.

SINGAPORE: The death of Singapore politician Joshua B. Jeyaretnam has removed the wealthy city-state's most iconic opposition figure, dealing another body blow to a feeble movement debilitated by government lawsuits and voter apathy.

Jeyaretnam, a once-wealthy lawyer who was driven to bankruptcy under the weight of multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuits by government leaders, died on Tuesday from heart failure. He was 82.

In a country that's under a virtual one-party rule, Jeyaretnam found his place in history as the first opposition politician to get elected to Parliament in 1981 — 22 years after the ruling People's Action Party took power in 1959 when colonial ruler Britain granted self government.

"He will of course be remembered as the man who ended the PAP monopoly," said Simon Tay, a former opposition member of parliament and now chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs think-tank. "Even if this first victory did not grow into a two-party system, it is an important marker."

Singapore joined Malaysia in a federation in 1963 but broke away as an independent state two years later, led by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, a contemporary of Jeyaretnam and his most bitter foe.

In 1981, Jeyaretnam seemed poised to carve out a lasting power base when he entered Parliament as a Workers Party lawmaker. But since then, the opposition has made little headway. Today, 27 years later, the PAP has 82 of 84 parliament seats.

At best, the opposition has been a minor irritant — and Jeyaretnam its most vocal nuisance — for the PAP as it maintained its stranglehold over power while limiting civil liberties and freedom of speech.

The government, first led by Lee and now by his son Lee Hsien Loong, says such restrictions are necessary to preserve the hard-won economic prosperity and racial stability of this multiethnic nation of 4.8 million people, who have seen per capita annual income rise to US$$35,163 last year from $512 in 1965.

Singapore is Southeast Asia's financial hub, a vocal advocate of a free market and a key ally of the United States in trade and politics, even though Washington has often criticized its civil liberties record including the use of detention without trial.

The government's prudent economic management that turned Singapore from an economic backwater to one of the wealthiest countries in the world is one of the reasons why the PAP wins elections handsomely.

But critics chafe at PAP's super-dominance of Parliament, which they say is achieved by subjugating the opposition to the point of virtual annihilation, including by micromanaging a complex system of parliamentary elections.

Following a 1988 amendment in the law only nine constituencies have straight fights between ruling and opposition parties.

The remaining 75 lawmakers are elected through a multimember group constituency, ostensibly to promote better representation from the minority Malay and Indian communities in the ethnic Chinese-majority country.

Voters select from among closed party lists of five or six candidates, and the party that receives a plurality of votes wins all seats in the district. This means Singapore's poorly-funded and weak opposition have to field about 400 candidates for 75 seats — a near impossibility given their limited appeal.

Singaporeans — with a few exceptions such as Jeyaretnam and Chee Soon Juan of the opposition Singapore Democratic Party — have accepted this system largely without protest .

Chee was charged in August with assembling without a permit for a protest against poverty in 2006. He also was bankrupted and barred from standing in elections after failing to pay Lee Kuan Yew and Goh about US$300,000 in libel damages for comments he made during the 2001 elections.

Jeyaretnam's "legacy is people like us who continue to work on what he started. We're not relenting, we're not giving up." said Chee's sister, Chee Siok Chin, a party leader.

But it is difficult to imagine that people like Chee and Jeyaretnam, despite their strident defense of right to free speech and assembly, can strike a chord with many Singaporeans.

"The rhetoric of democracy at all costs doesn't appeal to the majority of Singaporeans," said National University of Singapore sociology professor Chua Beng Huat.

"Singaporeans aren't culturally liberal, in an individualistic sense. Singaporeans who are liberal democrats are a painful minority, and J.B.J. symbolized that."

He was a cautionary tale for other opposition leaders of the perils of directly criticizing government leaders. He was driven to bankruptcy in 2001 by defamation lawsuits brought by the two Lees and Goh Chok Tong, who was prime minister after Lee, the father, stepped down in 1990, until Lee, the son, took over in 2004.

Jeyaretnam estimated he paid out more than S$1.6 million (US$925,000) in damages and court costs over the years. Still, after emerging from bankruptcy earlier this year, he said he would run for Parliament in the next elections, due by 2011.

Friends and foe alike hailed the tenacity and selflessness of Jeyaretnam.

"I did not believe his brand of politics was good for Singapore," said Goh, the former prime minister. "Even though I did not agree with his political cause, I respect his fighting spirit to advance it and his willingness to pay a price for it."

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Associated Press writer Vijay Joshi contributed to this report.