Joshua B. Jeyaretnam: Singapore opposition leader

Joshua B. Jeyaretnam: Singapore opposition leader

Jeyaretnam campaigned against the "enslavement of Singapore by its rulers"

Joshua B. Jeyaretnam was an opposition leader in Singapore who championed greater freedom for Singaporeans and sought the introduction of a Western-style democracy. JBJ, as he was often known, was an acerbic critic of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), who repeatedly found himself in court defending libel actions for his comments. During his 37-year career as an opposition politician he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in defamation damages to PAP leaders. The punitive financial losses would lead him to bankruptcy on more than one occasion and bar him from standing for Parliament.

He was often a solitary voice in a country where protests are restricted by limits on public assembly and a law that allows detention without trial. Government critics also complain of limited access to the media.

Seemingly, however, nothing would silence Jeyaretnam’s virtual lone opposition. When retailers refused to stock his books on Singaporean politics, JBJ would stand on street corners and outside railway stations to sell his publications. He became the first opposition politician to win a Parliamentary seat against the PAP in 1981, in a parliament solely dominated by the party since the country’s independence from Malaysia in 1965.

Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam was born in 1926 in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) during a family visit. An Anglican Christian of Sri Lankan Tamil descent, he was educated at St Andrew’s School in Singapore before training as a lawyer at University College London.

He enjoyed a successful early career as a lawyer and judge, but it was his move into politics that changed his lifestyle, and he struggled to pay mounting debts from damages he lost in high-profile defamation cases. A stubborn, fiery and outspoken critic of authoritarianism in Singapore, he sought an end to the controls on freedom of expression and political activities.

JBJ came to prominence in October 1981 as the Secretary-General of the Workers’ Party — the party he founded — when he ended the PAP’s monopoly of Parliament by winning a by-election. Although this was little threat to the PAP, the Government responded by increasing its control over trade unions and the ownership of the country’s major newspapers.

Jeyaretnam lost his parliamentary seat in November 1986 when he was fined and sentenced to one month in prison. The Supreme Court had upheld a conviction for perjury in connection with a bankruptcy case against the Workers’ Party a few years earlier. Under the country’s Constitution, he was not eligible to stand for parliament for five years.

It was not long before he was in trouble again with the authorities and he was fined by a parliamentary committee for abuse of privilege. The fine was levied after JBJ had made allegations of government interference in the judiciary. Further fines were imposed for alleged contempt of parliament and in October 1987 he was removed from the country’s Law Society register. He successfully appealed against this decision and was reinstated as a practising lawyer when the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the UK overturned the decision. Singapore, as a former Crown colony and a Commonwealth member, recognised the Privy Council as its highest court of appeal.

It was during the course of his appeal that his previous convictions were said to have been “fatally flawed” but the Privy Council had no jurisdiction over the court where he had been convicted. Only a presidential pardon would allow Jeyaretnam to re-enter Parliament but this was refused by President Wee Kim Wee in May 1989.

Jeyaretnam’s disqualification from Parliament remained in force until November 1991, which prevented him from standing in the general election three months beforehand. He had avoided bankruptcy in October of that year by paying S$393,000 for legal costs to Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime Minister and founding leader of Singapore who had served eight terms in office. Lee had won a defamation action against Jeyaretnam over remarks that JBJ had made at an election rally in 1988. Typical of Jeyaretnam’s attitude was a question he asked Lee in a parliamentary committee meeting in 1985: “Aren’t you a bit annoyed because I don’t crawl to you?” In his memoirs, Lee called Jeyaretnam a “sparring partner” who was all “sound and fury”.

JBJ regained a parliamentary seat in 1997 and retained it until 2001, when he left the Workers’ Party. He was declared bankrupt that year, the result of being unable to pay the fine of about S$367,000 in damages for a defamation action brought by Lee, Lee Hsien Loong (Lee’s son and current Prime Minister), Goh Chok Tong (a former Prime Minister) and others.

The Singapore Government argued that the defamation suits were necessary to maintain the integrity of the PAP’s leaders and therefore their ability to command respect in a complex multiracial society where there are four official languages — Malay (the national language), Chinese Mandarin, Tamil and English. Critics of Singapore’s ruling party, however, said that Jeyaretnam’s alleged defamatory comments would not excite comment, let alone legal action, in most other countries.

JBJ was a socialist at heart who believed that the PAP’s policies were for the benefit of a wealthy upper class, leaving a large underclass of poorer citizens. He railed against what he called the “Lee” dynasty, but his repeated clashes with the Government alienated him from many Singaporeans. He cleared his bankruptcy status last year and was preparing to stand for election again for a new party that he had helped to form, the Reform Party, saying that Singapore had been “enslaved” by its rulers.

Over the course of his many legal battles he estimated that he had paid out more than S$1.6 million in damages and court costs. He said he had lost count of the number of times he had been sued — and lost. Earlier this year JBJ told The Straits Times that “all I want to do is to give people a chance to live their own lives . . . and not have everything dictated to them”.

Jeyaretnam was predeceased in 1980 by his wife, Margaret, whom he had met when they were law students in Britain. He is survived by two sons.

Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, politician, was born on January 5, 1926. He died on September 30, 2008, aged 82
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By Gopalan Nair :
Friday, January 12, 2007
Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, Senior Counsel, Singapore ?

Ladies and Gentlemen,

You are quite right. The title is wrong. Mr. JB Jeyaretnam, is not a senior counsel. In fact, just the opposite. He is a disbarred lawyer, a former criminal having gone to jail, and a bankrupt. That is according to Lee Kuan Yew and the Singapore legal system.

But anyone who knows Jeyaretnam, knows that if there ever was one man in Singapore deserving of the title, senior counsel, it has to be Mr. Jeyaretnam. He was before he was struck off the Bar, the foremost criminal lawyer in Singapore, with a brilliant career at the law. Educated in London as a Barrister, he returned to Singapore to join the legal service where he was elevated to become the highest Judge in the District Courts, the position of Senior District Judge. He left the legal service in protest at Lee's politicising the Singapore Legal Service by appointing his supporters in prominent positions. He then started his own legal practice and enjoyed a lucrative practice in criminal law for many years, defending many murder cases, and making a name in the criminal bar. The problem started when Jeyaretnam decided to go into politics against Lee in 1974. From that point on, the highly respected Jeyaretnam was steadily turned into a criminal.

We have heard the story many times, even with others. Lee began forming trumped up charges against Jeyaretnam. He was brought to court and promptly convicted by highly paid corrupt judges who were acting as Lee's politicians rather than judges. In short order, Jeyaretnam was convicted, sent to jail, disbarred from practice, repeatedly sued for libel and slander and slapped with crippling damage awards amounting to millions and destroyed completely. Destroyed not only monetarily but also his reputation destroyed.

And for for anyone who knows Jeyaretnam, he is an upright man of integrity, a brilliant lawyer and a great asset to his country.

Who then are Singapore's Senior Counsel. The position of Senior Counsel was created in Singapore as a parallel to the British system of Queen's Counsel. Senior Counsel are supposed to be lawyers with great experience, probity and integrity and an example to the Bar. But in Singapore, truly, it is not your legal qualifications that enable you to be elevated to this exalted position. It is your political stand.

It is like this. Anyone who really wants to succeed in Singapore by fair means or foul, join Lee's Peoples Action Party, the Party in power in the one-party state of Singapore, if you don't count the two miserable opposition Members of Parliment. For children, there is the PAP youth wing. You are then indoctrinated. Just as an opportunist under the Third Reich would have joined the Hitler Youth to get along in the Nazi Administration. Once your loyalty remains certain, and you are seen to do well in your exams, you are then co-opted so to speak to high office in Lee's government. If a lawyer, you get jobs in the large law firms who support Lee. In these law firms, these minions, are then given sufficient important legal work and gain experience. Since they have the experience, they are then made Senior Counsel by Lee and his politicians. Outwardly, they will pretend that it was the Law Society who appointed them. But in fact, since the Law Society itself is in the pocket of Lee and company, it is in fact Lee and his friends who decide who is to be made Senior Counsel.

As I have said in the past, as you you all know, the law in Singapore is abused at will anytime by Lee and his son and their government. There is no real law in Singapore. What they call Senior Counsel are lawyers who have completely sold their consciences, for personal gain. These Senior Counsel, have no complaints about the constant detraction and abuse of the rule of law. They make no protest when Lee abuses the Constitution by denying the right to free speech and expression, the right to peaceful assembly, the right to form independent unions for workers, the right to a free press and media. These Senior Counsel have no comment on any of these violations. None of them have ever defended or will ever defend a political dissident such as Dr. Chee Soon Juan. None of these have any views about anything. They will of course tell you that Singapore has the best legal system and other things that their masters want to hear.

You would expect all praises too from any successful German lawyer in the Third Reich for Herr Hitler. It is a sad case of you scratch my back and I scratch yours, and the hell with the law.

Lee, it now appears, has gone too far in his openly abusing the law for his political ends. The Jeyaretnam case, followed by his punishing a string of other political dissidents has become well known. And this is hurting the reputation of Singapore in their so-called commercial hub position which they claim to have.

Singapore relies a great deal in international banking and commerce, areas where it is mandatory to have an independent judiciary. The sanctity of contracts depends on an independent judiciary. If the independence of the judiciary is suspect, it becomes risky for your investments.

And this is the problem, I fear is now facing Singapore. While these Senior Counsel benefit themselves by singing praises to father and son, Lee and Company, they are risking the future viability of the country as a commercial center.

Like Mr. Chiao Hick Tin, the Singapore Attorney General had said recently, (Straits Times article, January 9th, 2007, please see my earlier post) the law is the foundation of a society's existence. If it is undermined the country's very existence becomes uncertain. In this point, Mr. Chiao, I agree with you. Please stop abusing the law for your political ends.
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Dr Poh: Why I parted company with PAP

December 27, 2009 - By Cai Haoxiang and Jeremy Au Yong from Straits Times

Sipping tea over the dining room table at his two-storey terrace house in East Coast Road, Dr Poh Soo Kai exudes an old-school gentility that belies his 17-year political incarceration and hardened socialist convictions.

As his wife Margaret urges the reporters to help themselves to freshly cut papaya and Penang pastries, the 77-year old gives a genial chuckle: ‘My life story! So where do you want to start?’

Looking at the soft-spoken balding man in his polo T-shirt, it is hard to imagine that he was once regarded as a threat to national security.

The former Barisan Sosialis leader was arrested in 1963 for alleged pro-communist activities. He was released at the end of 1972 and re-arrested in 1976, accused of plotting to revive communist united front activities.

After his release in 1982, he practised as a doctor for eight years before emigrating to Canada with his wife in 1990. He returned to Singapore for good two years ago.

Among his peers, Dr Poh is remembered as the student activist who co-wrote the anti-British editorial entitled ‘Aggression in Asia’ in Fajar, the journal of the then-University of Malaya Socialist Club (USC), in May 1954. It led to his arrest together with seven other students for sedition.

Today, Dr Poh joins a growing group of ageing former leftists who are stepping into the open to give their side of the Singapore story.

He is a key collaborator behind the book The Fajar Generation: The University Socialist Club And The Politics Of Post-war Malaya And Singapore, launched at the Alumni Medical Centre at Singapore General Hospital on Nov15.

In four articles, Dr Poh wrote about the founding of the club, the political circumstances surrounding his detention, and the future of socialism.

The first question that springs to mind: After living in Vancouver for 17 years as a rose-planting retiree, why did he return to Singapore in 2007?

His reply: I wanted to be with my family.

‘My sister who lived in Canada has passed away. I’m getting old. The National Health Service there is very good but when you go to the hospital, nobody comes to see you.’

All his surviving family members, who include two brothers and two sisters, are in Singapore.

Dr Poh was born in Singapore, the fourth child of six in a privileged Straits-born Chinese family.

His maternal grandfather was prominent millionaire businessman and philanthropist Tan Kah Kee, and his uncle was Mr Lee Kong Chian, another famous philanthropist and founder of OCBC Bank.

Just before the fall of Singapore to the Japanese, his family moved to India. He spent the four war years in a Catholic missionary secondary school in Mumbai.

He moved back to Singapore after the Japanese surrender and entered Raffles Institution, before going to the medical faculty of the University of Malaya, the predecessor of the National University of Singapore, in 1950.

His nascent socialist views can be traced to his coming of age years in a colonial society that was undergoing tremendous political ferment after the war.

On campus, he joined like-minded students in USC. Formed in 1953, it was a debating forum for students who were against colonialism and sought independence for Malaya and Singapore. They believed in freedoms of speech and assembly, and opposed detention without trial.

Its founding members included Dr Wang Gungwu, now an eminent China scholar, Mr James Puthucheary, Mr S. Woodhull, Mr Ong Pang Boon, Mr Chua Sian Chin, Mr Abdullah Majid and Dr Lim Hock Siew.

Dr Poh served as the club’s first treasurer and second president, and chaired the editorial board of Fajar, which means ‘dawn’ in Malay.

He and Dr M.K. Rajakumar co-wrote the May 1954 Fajar article which condemned Western imperialism and criticised the South-east Asia Treaty Organisation, a military pact formed by the Western powers to oppose communism in the region.

Enraged, the British authorities launched a dawn raid on the Bukit Timah campus and arrested the writers and six students for sedition just before they were about to sit for their final examinations. The six were Professor Edwin Thumboo, Mr Puthucheary, Mr Kwa Boo Sun, Mr Lam Khuan Kit, Mr P. Arudsothy and Mr Thomas Varkey.

Their defence was led by Mr D.N. Pritt, a Queen’s Counsel from England assisted by a junior lawyer, Mr Lee Kuan Yew. The charges were thrown out without the defence being called.

The case became a cause celebre, imprinting Mr Lee’s name in the public consciousness, helping him to garner widespread support among English- and Chinese-educated intellectuals and students.

As Dr Poh recollects, after the Fajar trial, Mr Lee would invite him to his house at 38 Oxley Road every fortnight to ‘drink beer and talk’.

He notes that he was involved in the embryonic discussions that eventually led to the founding of the People’s Action Party (PAP) three months later. ‘But Lee did most of the work, I just attended to give my views.’

He says his relations with Mr Lee began to cool when he began to suspect that the PAP leader did not share the same ideological platform as the leftists.

Nevertheless, he remained an ordinary PAP member and was inactive in politics as he was tied down by his career.

In 1957, he had graduated from medical school. In 1959, when the PAP swept to power, he was in government service, training to be a doctor in surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology.

THE BIG SPLIT

In 1961, the political temperature was coming to the boil. The PAP was racked by challenges from its powerful leftist faction over the issues of merger with Malaya, Chinese education and the continuing detention of leftists.

After losing two by-elections, the party was on the brink of collapse. The beleaguered Mr Lee moved a motion of confidence in the 51-seat legislative assembly. The PAP survived when 27 voted aye but 13 dissident assemblymen abstained.

The dissidents and other leftist members were expelled from the party. They formed a new party, Barisan Sosialis, led by Mr Lim Chin Siong as secretary-general and Dr Lee Siew Choh as chairman.

Dr Poh was roped in as assistant secretary-general. He remembers being in charge of discussions on party issues and ideology.

He says he had to give up a scholarship to pursue higher studies and a job in the government service to join Barisan. Why? ‘It was a duty to fight the PAP leadership’s stand.’

He felt the PAP leadership had betrayed its earlier position on freeing students and unionists locked up for participating in labour unrest.

Touching on The Big Split of 1961, which saw the leftists leaving the PAP to form Barisan Sosialis, Dr Poh insists: ‘We did not split from the PAP. That’s a fact…none of the official views wanted to stress on that. We had a difference of opinion.’

He referred to statements by six PAP unionists in the run-up to the 1961 Anson by-election, which came out openly against the ruling party.

The Big Six – Mr Lim, Mr Fong Swee Suan, Mr Woodhull, Mr Dominic Puthucheary, Mr S.T. Bani and Mr Jamit Singh – had stated that while they supported the PAP in the coming by-election, they would not compromise on issues such as detention without trial and freedoms of press, speech, assembly and organisation.

Dr Poh argues that these statements amounted to a ‘request’, not an ‘ultimatum’. But Mr Lee, he says, saw this as a challenge to the PAP leadership and decided to make the split.

OPERATION COLD STORE

Feb2, 1963, was the day that changed Dr Poh’s life forever.

As he wrote in The Fajar Generation about the pre-dawn arrests: ‘There were the fierce barking of the dogs, a swarm of fully armed Gurkha police, the Jeeps and the Land Rovers.’

More than 100 leftists and unionists were arrested in a massive security exercise known as Operation Cold Store, aimed at putting communists and suspected communists behind bars.

As he recounts his years in detention, he draws a diagram of his prison on the back of an envelope.

The first period of detention involved months of solitary confinement, where he could sometimes hear prisoners shouting incoherently from their cells.

The strain detainees faced was more psychological than physical, he says, as they were interrogated about whether their friends were communists or involved in pro-communist activities.

Dr Poh admits he is a socialist, even a Marxist, but denies being a communist, that is, being a card-carrying member of the Malayan Communist Party.

In his recollection, detainees were asked to implicate their friends. He speaks about a man who had just come out of solitary confinement to live with detainees at the Moon Crescent Centre in Changi. Day or night, the man would wear dark glasses.

Puzzled by his behaviour, Dr Poh approached him one evening and asked him why. ‘Bo min kua lang (no face to see people), the man replied in Hokkien. He feels bad, he feels that he’s let down his friend.’

Reflecting on the experience of detention, he says that every detainee is scarred to some extent but that traumatic memories will wear off gradually. Yet his words, delivered in perfectly enunciated English, betray an occasional trace of bitterness and frustration: ‘No regrets, but you are unhappy, you know. It’s very obvious. I mean, you can’t keep a person in prison and lock him up, you know, without a valid reason.

‘You ask him (Lee) to bring you to court, he doesn’t bring you to court. I mean, you feel they have to change the system. You can’t have a system like this continue. You don’t want your children, your grandchildren to live in a police state.’

He would not shake Mr Lee’s hand if he met him. ‘There’s nothing more to say,’ he says.
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Singapore rejects 'repressive state' tag by rights watchdog
(AFP) – 23 January 2010

SINGAPORE — Singapore on Friday rejected allegations by a US-based human rights group that it is a "politically repressive state".

"Singapore is a democratic state with a clean and transparent government, whose public officials are held responsible against the highest standards of probity and integrity," the Ministry of Law said in a statement to AFP.

The ministry cited the latest World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report which rated Singapore as "first out of 133 countries for public trust of politicians and transparency of government policymaking".

Human Rights Watch in its annual report released Thursday slammed Singapore for jailing critics of the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) and hitting them with financially devastating libel suits.

The New York-based group also criticised the mandatory imposition of the death penalty for certain crimes, legislation that permit caning as well as laws that ban street protests and allow detention without trial.

"Singapore remains the textbook example of a politically repressive state," said HRW deputy Asia director Phil Robertson in a press statement Thursday.

HRW's global report had a chapter on Singapore, a wealthy city-state known for political stability, a low crime rate and a conducive environment for global businesses to operate, but also criticised for its little tolerance against dissent.

"Individuals who want to criticise or challenge the ruling party's hold on power can expect to face a life of harassment, lawsuits and even prison," Robertson said.

The Law Ministry rejected the allegations, and accused HRW of recycling propaganda put out by opposition politician Chee Soon Juan and other government critics.

Chee is a long-time critic of the PAP who has been jailed several times in his struggle against the government.

"Human Rights Watch?s approach seems to be that they can issue these pronouncements and we should follow them," the Ministry of Law said.

"And their approach seems to be that before they issue these pronouncements, they do not need an understanding of the facts or our viewpoints -- what we think and why we have chosen a specific governance model. These appear to be irrelevant to them."