The legendary Singapore opposition icon, Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, better known as JBJ (photo credit: Wikipedia), passed away early this morning of a heart failure.
After having left the Workers Party, he had just formed the Reform Party to mount a new challenge to PAP dominance. He was the interim secretary general of the party.
He was Singapore’s Mr Opposition, having broken the PAP’s 15-year monopoly in Parliament in the Anson by-election in 1981, winning 52 per cent of the votes to become Singapore’s first opposition MP.
He suffered much personal hardship after being at the losing end of a string of defamation and libel law suits and was forced to pay substantial damages, which eventually left him bankrupt for a number of years
No comments:
Post a Comment