Veteran Singaporean opposition leader J.B. Jeyaretnam died yesterday. He had waged a long and lonely campaign for greater political freedom in the tightly governed city-state.
He was attempting a fresh political comeback when he succumbed to heart failure.
The 82-year-old British-trained lawyer and former MP was the nemesis of Singapore’s iron-fisted founding leader Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀), 85, whose People’s Action Party (PAP) will celebrate 50 uninterrupted years in power next year.
PHOTO: AFP
“I haven’t got very many more years,” Jeyaretnam said in July at the launch of the new Reform Party, which was to be his vehicle for a comeback after years in the political wilderness.
Jeyaretnam, remembered by many Singaporeans for his old-school lambchop sideburns and a gravelly voice that thrilled audiences in court, parliament and street rallies, said he feared “no one except God.”
Born Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam in 1926 during a family visit to what is now Sri Lanka, he was often a solitary voice in largely ethnic Chinese Singapore, a prosperous financial center where protests are restricted and government critics complain of limited access to the media.
Despite being driven to financial ruin by costly defamation suits mounted by PAP leaders, and sidelined by younger opposition figures, Jeyaretnam was still plotting a return to parliament when he died.
“He’s such a man who never gives up ... fighting all the way,” long-time political ally Ng Teck Siong said on radio station 938Live after news of Jeyaretnam’s death was carried by the city-state’s pro-government media.
Singaporean leaders maintain that the Western-style democracy Jeyaretnam championed could ruin a tiny republic with no natural resources and surrounded by far bigger neighbors, an argument Jeyaretnam never bought.
During his career, Jeyaretnam spent more than US$900,000 paying off damages awarded to PAP leaders and had to sell off his house in Singapore, settling in his later years in the neighboring Malaysian city of Johor Bahru.
Lee, who ruled for three decades and still serves in the Cabinet of his son, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍), never concealed his deep hatred of Jeyaretnam, calling him a “thoroughly destructive force” who was “all sound and fury.”
Even during his darkest days, Jeyaretnam soldiered on. He helped support his cause by selling books on the sidewalks of Singapore, and managed to clear his debts to pave the way for a fresh stab at public office.
“I get my strength from somewhere else, if you know what I mean,” he said in an interview in 2006. “I refuse to conform to the world.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS