In Memoriam : Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam - a true Indian Tiger

“
You did not die Joshua Benjamin Jeyaratnam.
You just transmuted into a form that allows you to transcend your mortal coil,
and embed your spirit in the hearts of many.

~ edsperience

JB Jeyaratnam

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Singapore opposition leader dies

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacif...

Earlier this year Mr Jeyaretnam formed a new opposition partyVeteran 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. Political injusticesHe served as an MP from 1981 to 1986 and from 1997 to 2001. His first victory, as standard bearer for the Workers' Party, came when he defeated the People's Action Party (PAP) of founding prime minister of independent Singapore Mr Lee. He was returned to parliament in 1984 but in 1986 was found guilty of making a false declaration of his party's accounts and fined a sum which made him liable to expulsion from the legislature. He was disqualified from sitting in parliament until 1991, and disbarred from legal practice. The Privy Council in Britain ruled in 1988 that he had been wrongly disbarred in "a grievous injustice".

Singapore lost a truly great man yesterday with the passage of Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam to the next life.

He was the first opposition candidate who got into parliament('81), and subsequently booted out after re-election in '84 following charges of financial impropriety related to the collection of party funds - even though the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, when appealed to by JB, called it a ‘grievous injustice’.  (Lee Kuan Yew, the then PM, and later turned, 'senior minister', and then turned, 'minister mentor' when the next PM stepped down....positions produced by their own party when the aforementioned stepped down.  The next PM was Lee Kuan Yew's son, Lee Hsien Loong.)

Their Lordships have to record their deep disquiet that by a series of misjudgments the appellant and his co-accused Wong have suffered a grievous injustice…. The appellant, in addition, has been deprived of his seat in Parliament and disqualified from practising his profession."

Source : Nationmaster

So much for Singapore.

JBJ

What I’ve always admired about JB is his resolve in the face of all adversity.  He never backed down, always objectively focused, and afflicted with a deep sense of commitment to justice and democracy – and I absolutely love his sideboards, his impeccable 'queen's English', and his firm handshake.  He was a prime and typical example of that sector of singaporeans – English-speaking, westernised, empathetic, open to new ideas, amongst others – that had once threatened to take the perspectival economy of singapore into the modern age, but which was undermined by the government-led movement against cultural westernization, and its strenuous attempts to maintain singapore as a Chinese-dominated country strongly socialized into not questioning authority, and inevitably circumnavigating the ensuing evils through opportunism, through a host of means.  But even with the fruition of the government’s plans in recent years JB never backed down.  He stood passionate, firm, resolute, and hypercritical in the face of authoritarianism against all odds and lunged forward in leaps and bounds.  I sincerely respect this man as a true son of the proverbial Jewel in the Crown – India.  A 'Tomorrow Man'.  He will be missed by many, but, I dare say, he will live on in various forms within many of us and stoke the cinders of passion and resolve in the quest to move the ideal of democracy and justice from a myth to a reality.

‘Rest in Peace’?  No sir!  I dare say that given a chance, JB will be back in the ring doing the age-old battle for democracy and justice.   

You did not die Joshua Benjamin Jeyaratnam, you just transmuted into a form that allows you to transcend your mortal coil and embed your spirit in the hearts of many.

Tomorrow People

Billy Idol