J. B. Jeyaretnam

Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam (ஜோசுவா பெஞ்சமின் ஜெயரத்தினம்; 5 January 1926 – 30 September 2008), better known as J. B. Jeyaretnam or by his initials JBJ, was a Singaporean politician, lawyer, and judge.

Born in Jaffna in 1926, Jeyaretnam grew up in Malaya and Singapore before he read law in London and qualified as a barrister in 1951.

In 1948, he left for England to read law at University College London.

He graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) degree in 1951.

After being called to the bar as a barrister at Gray's Inn on 27 November 1951, Jeyaretnam joined the 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.

Upon returning to Singapore, he worked in the legal service from 1952 to 1963 before setting up his own law firm in 1968.

He left the legal service in 1963 for private practice and eventually set up his own law firm in 1968.

Teo was charged and found guilty of shooting at a police officer with intent to cause harm, and before Teo's 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, and Teo's case should be conferred for a jury trial.

In February 1970, a month after the abolition of jury trials in Singapore, Jeyaretnam represented Singaporean gunman Teo Cheng Leong, who became the first person to be sentenced to death by a non-jury trial court with two judges.

A former member of the opposition Workers' Party, he was appointed as secretary-general of the Workers' Party between 1971 and 2001.

He entered politics in 1971 and became the secretary-general of the opposition Workers' Party.

Jeyaretnam's request was overruled, and in the aftermath, Teo was hanged in May 1971.

In June 1971, Jeyaretnam joined the opposition Workers' Party and became the party's secretary-general.

Thereafter, he contested in the 1972, 1976, 1980 general election, 1977 and 1979 by-elections, but lost to the governing People's Action Party (PAP) in all of them.

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%.

He was the de facto Leader of the Opposition between 1981 and 1986 when he won as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Anson SMC and served between 1981 and 1986.

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 into Parliament since Singapore gained independence in 1965.

In 1983, Jeyaretnam defended Tan Mui Choo, one of the three perpetrators of the 1981 Toa Payoh ritual murders.

He contested in 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 President Wee Kim Wee for his convictions to be removed so that he could return to Parliament, but was denied.

He was also served as an Non-Constituency Member of Parliament between 1997 and 2001 of the 9th Parliament of Singapore.

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 Jeyaretnam left the Workers' Party in 2001, Low Thia Kiang succeeded him as secretary-general of the Workers' Party.

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.

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.