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.
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.
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.
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.