Removal From Parliament
Jeyaretnam was subsequently brought down by a series of charges which he claimed were politically motivated to remove him from Parliament and prevent him from taking part in future elections. Two months after his 1984 re-election, Jeyaretnam and WP Chairman Wong Hong Toy were charged for allegedly misreporting his party accounts.
In 1986, Senior District Judge Michael Khoo found him innocent of all charges but one. The prosecution appealed, and the Chief Justice ordered a retrial in a different district court rather than an appeal in the Supreme Court (thus denying Jeyaretnam the opportunity to appeal a revised verdict to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom). At the retrial, Jeyaretnam was declared guilty on all charges. The judge sentenced him to three months' imprisonment (later commuted to one month) and fined him S$5,000 – a sentence sufficient to disqualify him from serving in Parliament and prevent him from standing in parliamentary elections for a period of five years. He was also disbarred as a lawyer. (Judge Michael Khoo was transferred from head of the Subordinate Court to the Attorney-General's Chambers shortly after, a move widely viewed as a demotion. When Jeyaretnam called for an enquiry into the transfer, alleging that the Chief Justice and the Attorney-General were "beholden" to Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the allegation was dismissed as "scandalous".)
Read more about this topic: J. B. Jeyaretnam
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