J. B. Jeyaretnam

Common card · No. 403788

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...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Jacklee; original photograph by Jacob George., CC BY 2.0