J. B. Jeyaretnam - Background and Early Career

Background and Early Career

An Anglican Christian of Sri Lankan Tamil descent, Jeyaretnam was educated at St Andrew's School in Singapore, before going on to read law at University College London.

Singapore became an independent country in 1965, and at the first post-independence general election in 1968, the People's Action Party (PAP) won all 51 of the seats in Parliament after the main opposition party at the time, the Barisan Sosialis, boycotted the elections. The PAP maintained this 100% electoral record at the 1972, 1976 and 1980 general elections and all intervening by-elections up to 1981.

In 1971, Jeyaretnam led a group of lawyers who took over the opposition Workers' Party (WP, which had been founded in 1957 by Singapore's former Chief Minister, David Marshall, but had become a fairly small and insignificant party during the 1960s), and became the party's Secretary-General.

Jeyaretnam first stood for Parliament in at the 1972 general election, when he contested the Farrer Park constituency and lost to the PAP's Lee Chiaw Meng by 23.1% of the vote to 73.8% (with a third candidate taking 3.1%). At the 1976 general election, he contested Kampong Chai Chee, and lost to the PAP's Andrew Fong by 40.1% to 59.9%. In 1977, he contested a by-election in Radin Mas, and was defeated by PAP candidate Bernard Chen by 29.4% to 70.6%. He then contested Telok Blangah at a 1979 by-election and the 1980 election, losing to the PAP's Rohan bin Kamis both times by 38.8% to 61.2% in 1979, and by 47.0% to 53.0% in 1980.