Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam (5 January 1926 – 30 September 2008) was a Singaporean politician and lawyer who served as secretary-general of the opposition Workers' Party from 1971 to 2001 and was the de facto Leader of the Opposition between 1981 and 1986. He was also an elected Member of Parliament for Anson SMC between 1981 and 1986, and a Non-constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) from 1997 to 2001.
Born in Jaffna in 1926, Jeyaretnam grew up in Malaya and Singapore before he studied law in London and qualified as a barrister in 1951. Upon returning to Singapore, he worked in the legal service from 1952 to 1963 before setting up his own law firm in 1968. He entered politics in 1971 and became the secretary-general of the Workers' Party. Thereafter, he contested the 1972, 1976, 1980 general election, and the 1977 and 1979 by-elections, but lost to candidates of the governing People's Action Party (PAP) in all of them.
Jeyaretnam had his first electoral victory in the 1981 by-election in Anson SMC when he won 51.93% of the vote against the PAP's Pang Kim Hin and United People's Front's Harbans Singh, becoming the first opposition politician to be elected to Parliament since Singapore gained independence in 1965. He contested the 1984 general election in Anson SMC again and won with 56.81% of the vote against the PAP's Ng Pock Too.
In 1986, following convictions for making false statements about the Workers' Party's accounts, Jeyaretnam was not only fined and imprisoned for a month, but also lost his parliamentary seat. After he was disqualified from practising law in 1987, he appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which reversed his disbarment in 1988 and called his conviction "a grievous injustice". Jeyaretnam appealed to Wee Kim Wee, the President of Singapore, for his convictions to be removed so that he could return to Parliament, but was denied.
During the 1997 general election, Jeyaretnam joined a five-member Workers' Party team to contest in Cheng San GRC, but they lost 45.18% of the vote against the PAP team. Since the Workers' Party team in Cheng San GRC were the "best losers" in an election in which there were fewer than six elected opposition Members of Parliament, they were offered one parliamentary seat as a Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP), which Jeyaretnam took up. However, Jeyaretnam lost his NCMP seat and left the Workers' Party in 2001 when he was declared bankrupt after failing to keep up with damages from a series of defamation suits against him.
After his discharge from bankruptcy in 2007, Jeyaretnam founded the Reform Party in June 2008. He died of heart failure on 30 September that year.
Early life and education An Anglican Christian of Sri Lankan Tamil descent, Jeyaretnam was born in Chankanai, Jaffna while his parents were on leave from Malaya. His father, Victor Lord Joshua, moved to Malaya and took up a position with the Public Works Department.
Jeyaretnam grew up in Johor and started his formal education in Muar in a French convent where his eldest sister was a student. When his education at English College Johore Bahru was disrupted by the Japanese occupation of Malaya, Jeyaretnam learned Japanese to make himself more employable, and began working in the census department, then as an interpreter in the Japanese Transport Department. In Jeyaretnam's oral interviews, he said it was a means to avoid being pressed into building the Burma Railway, which was called the "Death Railway" due to the high fatality rate during its construction.
After the war, Jeyaretnam moved to Singapore, where he continued his education at St. Andrew's School. In 1948, he left for England to read law at University College London and graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) in 1951.
Legal career After being called to the bar as a barrister at Gray's Inn on 27 November 1951, Jeyaretnam joined the Singapore Legal Service in 1952. In the following 11 years, Jeyaretnam held various positions, including magistrate, district judge, crown counsel, deputy public prosecutor and registrar of the Supreme Court. He was also Singapore's first criminal district judge. In his memoir, Jeyaretnam revealed that he had crossed swords with Lee Kuan Yew when the latter was still a practising lawyer, at times when Jeyaretnam was the deputy public prosecutor and later the presiding court judge. He left the legal service in 1963 for private practice and eventually set up his own law firm in 1968.
In February 1970, a month after the abolition of jury trials in Singapore, Jeyaretnam represented Teo Cheng Leong, who had been found guilty of shooting at a police officer with intent to cause harm and was the first person to be sentenced to death in Singapore by a non-jury trial court with two judges. Before the trial, Jeyaretnam sought to have Teo tried by a jury since his case took place in March 1969, ten months before the abolition of jury trials, so the case should be conferred for a jury trial. Jeyaretnam's request was overruled and Teo was eventually hanged in May 1971.
In 1983, Jeyaretnam defended Tan Mui Choo, one of the three perpetrators of the 1981 Toa Payoh ritual murders.
Political career Elections between 1971 and 1980 In June 1971, Jeyaretnam joined the opposition Workers' Party and became the party's secretary-general. He made his electoral debut in the 1972 general election when he contested in Farrer Park SMC against Lee Chiaw Meng of the governing People's Action Party (PAP) and S. A. Latiff of the opposition United People's Front (UPF). He lost with 23.11% of the vote against Lee's 73.82%, but did better than Latiff's 3.07%.
During the 1976 general election, Jeyaretnam contested in Kampong Chai Chee SMC against PAP candidate Andrew Fong, but lost after garnering 40.08% of the vote against Fong's 59.92%. The following year, he contested in the by-election in Radin Mas SMC against the PAP's Bernard Chen, but lost with 29.41% of the vote against Chen's 70.59%. In 1979, he contested in a by-election in Telok Blangah SMC against Rohan Kamis of the PAP, but lost with 38.78% of the vote against Rohan's 61.22%. During the 1980 general election, he contested in Telok Blangah SMC against Rohan and lost again after garnering 46.98% of the vote against his opponent's 53.02%.
First opposition Member of Parliament since 1965 Jeyaretnam contested in a three-cornered fight during the 1981 by-election in Anson SMC against Pang Kim Hin of the PAP and Harbans Singh of the United People's Front. He won with 51.93% of the vote against Pang's 47.1% and Singh's 0.97%, becoming the first opposition politician to be elected to Parliament since Singapore gained independence in 1965. In the same year, Jeyaretnam represented Chiam See Tong, founder of the opposition Singapore Democratic Party, in filing a writ in the High Court seeking damages from Defence Minister Howe Yoon Chong and Foreign Affairs Minister S. Dhanabalan for slandering him during the speeches they made in 1980. Chiam eventually dropped the lawsuits against Howe and Dhanabalan after they publicly apologised to him.
In 1982, a complaint against Jeyaretnam was referred to the Singapore Parliament's Committee of Privileges, which looks into allegations of breaches of parliamentary privilege. He received a reprimand for not declaring a conflict of interest in an issue he brought up in Parliament which involved a person whom he was representing as a lawyer.
Jeyaretnam contested in Anson SMC again during the 1984 general election and won with 56.81% of the vote against the PAP candidate Ng Pock Too's 43.19%. The 1984 general election also saw Chiam winning the election in Potong Pasir SMC with 60.28% against the PAP candidate Mah Bow Tan. Jeyaretnam and Chiam were the only two elected opposition Members of Parliament in the Sixth Parliament.
Parliamentary fines and loss of parliamentary seat In March 1986, Jeyaretnam was referred to the Committee of Privileges again for making an unsubstantiated allegation in Parliament about the wrongful arrest of a citizen and failing to declare a conflict of interest in an issue he brought up in Parliament. He received two fines amounting to S$2,000.
Jeyaretnam was also fined S$1,000 by the committee for alleging that the Cabinet had interfered with the Subordinate Courts. After he sent letters to Anson SMC residents about the committee's conduct during his hearing, he was fined a total of S$25,000 for making a distorted report of the hearing in his letters.
On 10 November 1986, Jeyaretnam lost his parliamentary seat following his convictions for making false statements.
Jeyaretnam was fined S$10,000 in 1987 on a complaint that he, as the editor of the Workers' Party's newsletter "The Hammer", had allowed the publication of a distorted report on the committee in December 1986. The Workers' Party's executive council was also fined S$5,000.
Presidential elections In 1993, Jeyaretnam submitted an application for a certificate of eligibility to contest the presidential election but his application was rejected.
1997 general election During the 1997 general election, Jeyaretnam joined a five-member Workers' Party team to contest in Cheng San GRC against a PAP team led by Education Minister Lee Yock Suan. However, the Workers' Party team lost after garnering 45.18% of the vote against the PAP team's 54.82%. Since the Workers' Party team in Cheng San GRC were the "best losers" in an election in which there were fewer than six elected opposition Members of Parliament, they were offered one parliamentary seat as a Non-constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP). The Workers' Party selected Jeyaretnam to be the NCMP, which he accepted. He lost his NCMP seat after being declared bankrupt in July 2001 because undischarged bankrupts are barred from serving in Parliament and running for parliamentary elections.
Leaving the Workers' Party In October 2001, Jeyaretnam left the Workers' Party after he felt ostracised by his fellow party members and after he accused the party's leaders of not offering to help him with his debt payments.
Founding the Reform Party Following his discharge from bankruptcy in May 2007, Jeyaretnam announced his intention in April 2008 to challenge the PAP government again by forming a new political party, the Reform Party. On 17 June 2008, the Registry of Societies approved the Reform Party's application, making it an officially registered society in Singapore. Jeyaretnam served as the interim secretary-general of the party, which had only the legal minimum of ten members at the time of its creation.
Legal troubles 1977–1979: Defamation suit from Lee Kuan Yew After the 1976 general election, Lee Kuan Yew demanded an unconditional apology from Jeyaretnam for making the following remarks in a speech during the lead-up to the election:
Lee filed a defamation suit against Jeyaretnam in court when the latter refused to apologise. Lee and Jeyaretnam were represented in court by Queen's Counsels Robert Alexander and John Mortimer respectively, with the latter defending Jeyaretnam pro bono. A five-day trial took place in November 1978 and made headlines in The Straits Times. During the trial, Michael Wong Pakshong, the managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), claimed that the law firm Lee & Lee (run by Lee's wife Kwa Geok Choo) and Lee's brother Lee Kim Yew (a director of Tat Lee Bank) had no influence on the MAS's decision to grant a banking licence to Tat Lee Bank. Mortimer, while defending Jeyaretnam, said that Jeyaretnam held no responsibility for all the insinuations inferred from his words.