Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Singapore's opposition stalwart, J.B. Jeyaretnam, dies...


Veteran Singapore politician JB Jeyaretnam has died of heart failure in a Singapore hospital, aged 82. 

He was the first to break a government monopoly on power in Singapore when he won a seat in parliament in 1981. 

He had been forced into bankruptcy over defamation cases won by the government but was planning a new run for office. 

Dubbed the Grand Old Man of opposition politics, analysts said Mr Jeyaretnam was a thorn in the side of Singapore's Minister Mentor Lee Kuan-yew. 

Born in 1926 in Jaffna, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Mr Jeyaretnam trained as a lawyer in Britain before making his home in Singapore. More...

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