The First Wave: JBJ, Chiam & the Opposition in Singapore is by Loke Hoe Yeong , a London-based researcher who is also a consultant on politics and international affairs. The book examines the rise and fall of Singapore ’s opposition parties over a three-decade period from 1981 to 2011. In 1981, the late opposition politician J.B. Jeyaretnam won a by-election and disrupted the dominance of the ruling People’s Action Party in Parliament. While seats were won by opposition politicians such as Chiam See Tong in subsequent elections, these were in single-member constituencies. The opposition parties also struggled with internal strife and were not able to make significant gains until 2011, when the Workers’ Party won a clutch of seats at one go in a group representation constituency. The book, published by Epigram Books, is available for S$34.90 online and at major bookstores. Here are excerpts of the book: Chapter 4: Chiam Alone Jeyaretnam disqualified from Parliament In 1982, Jeyaretnam and Wong Hong Toy, the chairman of the Workers’ Party and a long-time opposition activist who resuscitated the party together with Jeyaretnam around 1972, had each faced a charge of making a false declaration about the Workers’ Party’s accounts to a commissioner of oaths. They had stated that the accounts, as prepared by the Workers’ Party treasurer, reflected a true and fair view of the party’s financial position in the first half of 1982, whereas the prosecution alleged that they omitted three donations in the form of cheques totalling S$2,600 during that period. The amount of those three donations was paid to the law firm of R. Murugason and Company, the personal account of Wong, and “an unknown person”. The charge from the prosecution was that they did so to prevent the distribution of party funds to the creditors of the Workers’ Party, which included former PAP MP Tay Boon Too, who had successfully sued Jeyaretnam for defamation in a case dating back to the early 1970s and was pressing the Workers’ Party to settle a long-standing debt. In Jeyaretnam’s account though, one of those donations was an uncrossed cheque of S$2,000 made out to the Workers’ Party from a Dr Ivy Chew, a supporter. The cheque came with a note that it could be used at Jeyaretnam’s discretion “for the cause of the opposition”. At around the same time, the mother of one of Jeyaretnam’s election agents, a washerwoman by the name of Madam Chiew Kim Kiat, was ordered by the courts to pay legal costs, which could see her being bankrupted. Madam Chiew had volunteered to put her name on a petition so that Jeyaretnam could challenge the count in Telok Blangah constituency during the 1980 general election, in which he contested, on the basis of alleged irregularities. The petition was dismissed by the courts. To help Madam Chiew, Jeyaretnam called Dr Chew for permission to transfer the cheque to R. Murugason and Company, who were Madam Chiew’s lawyers – that permission was given. Another of the three cheque donations was a contribution by a Workers’ Party supporter for the specific purpose of defraying Madam Chiew’s legal costs. In January 1984, Senior District Judge Michael Khoo acquitted Jeyaretnam and Wong on the main charge of making a false declaration. However, Jeyaretnam and Wong were found guilty of wrongfully diverting the third of the three cheque donations, which was a contribution by a party supporter for the specific purpose of setting up Jeyaretnam’s Anson office. For that, the two men were each given the relatively minor penalty of a S$1,000 fine. Nevertheless, the deputy public prosecutor asked the High Court for a retrial, arguing that the judge had “decided too fast” and erred in acquitting Jeyaretnam and Wong on the case of the first two cheques, in the process precluding the prosecution from further examining the two men. The deputy public prosecutor also complained that the judge erred in rejecting the prosecution’s application to file alternative charges against Jeyaretnam and Wong, for giving false information and fabricating evidence. In May, Chief Justice Wee Chong Jin, who heard the appeal, reserved judgment, and not much was heard of the case in the ensuing months. In April 1985, the ruling came – Chief Justice Wee overturned Michael Khoo’s ruling and issued a long judgment to explain his decision that came 11 months after he had reserved judgment on the case. He then ordered a retrial. Jeyaretnam fought to challenge the Chief Justice’s verdict in the Court of Criminal Appeal, but it was ultimately upheld that the case needed to go back to the subordinate courts. In September 1985, another senior district judge, E.T.C. Foenander, handed Jeyaretnam and Wong each a three-month jail sentence. Then, in early 1986, Jeyaretnam alleged in Parliament that the government had interfered in the judiciary – in August 1984, Michael Khoo was transferred to the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) to become senior state counsel and deputy public prosecutor, which Jeyaretnam said was a demotion, and allegedly so because of the seemingly lenient verdict Khoo had delivered for Jeyaretnam’s case about seven months before the transfer. Lee Kuan Yew immediately called for a commission of inquiry, with Justice T.S. Sinnathuray as its sole commissioner, to examine the independence and impartiality of district judges, to quash Jeyaretnam’s allegations. On the Singapore media’s run-ins with Lee Kuan Yew: veteran newsman PN Balji tells all in new book Justice Sinnathuray ruled that the commission found no evidence of judicial interference by the government, and that Jeyaretnam’s allegations were “wholly unfounded and scandalous”. By the time the commission’s report was tabled for debate in Parliament in late July and early August 1986, Jeyaretnam was in an explosive mood. In response to an accusation from S. Jayakumar, the Minister for Home Affairs, that Jeyaretnam had “attack[ed] the judiciary”, the latter responded, “it is a distorted mind, a sick mind”, which could have interpreted what he had said as such. His language took on an unparliamentary conduct, using words such as “bloody”. When ticked off by Dixie Tan, the MP for Ulu Pandan, who expounded on the special privileges and accompanying responsibilities of MPs, he said: “Thank you, grandmother.” Dixie Tan retorted: “I find him extremely rude, very boorish and absolutely without any sense of decency of behaviour.” Even the Speaker, Yeoh Ghim Seng, could not restrain him at points. Finally, after two days of continuous sittings on matters relating to Jeyaretnam’s alleged abuse of parliamentary privilege, Yeoh lost his patience when Jeyaretnam accused him of “allowing government ministers to get away with murder in this House”. Yeoh asked Jeyaretnam to withdraw that remark about him, saying: “I have been very patient with you.” And Jeyaretnam did. As the only other opposition MP, Chiam was inevitably dragged into the debate by the PAP MPs, though he cautiously contained his involvement. When Augustine Tan called Jeyaretnam a “snake”, Chiam protested the name-calling. But when the Speaker said, “Mr Chiam, he was not referring to you”, the PAP MPs laughed. Tan would not leave Chiam unscathed, on one occasion provoking Chiam into the debate by saying he was “not far behind” Jeyaretnam in terms of negative and malicious behaviour in Parliament. Chapter 6: Marxist conspiracy, American interference? Lee Kuan Yew enters the Internal Security Act (ISA) debate On May 27, the third day of the debate, Chiam called for an amendment of the motion to reject the government’s rearrest of the detainees, and was subsequently criticised by PAP MPs in speech after speech. It was then that Lee Kuan Yew rose to speak, to reject Chiam’s amendment of the motion – the first time the Prime Minister would give an extensive speech in Parliament on the ISA arrests of 1987 and 1988. The media was to quote Chiam as saying that Lee’s speech was “one of the most important speeches by the PM I can recall”, which “clearly and in no uncertain terms” set the ground rules for opposition politics in Singapore , and “defined clearly the meaning of subversion”. Delving into his own experiences tackling the Communists before independence, of communist figures of the 1950s like Fang Chuang Pi, whom Lee had dubbed “the Plen”, Lee reiterated what he had said in the Legislative Assembly back in 1958: Within this democratic system, everyone has the right to compete, to preach his political views, but the competition must be for the purpose of working the system, not of destroying it [which was what the communists were going to do]. These powers will not be allowed to be used against political opponents within the system who compete for the right to work the system. This was important, Lee said, because “this explains why Mr Chiam See Tong is here. Because if we had misused the ISA, he would not be here”: We give him full rights. He wants a meeting – Toa Payoh Stadium, Queenstown Stadium, National Stadium? Any hall, it is open to him. He can write, he can pamphletise, organise talks. He can go through new towns, town centres, market centres. There is no restriction on him. Chiam responded to this point at the ensuing sitting of Parliament: “The Prime Minister has said a lot of things in this House, but when we [opposition politicians] try to get it, his administrators said, ‘No, you can’t do this, you can’t do that.’ When we come back to the Prime Minister he says, ‘Well, I allow you, but if they don’t allow you, it is none of my business.’ It is just like the Teh Cheang Wan affair. In any event, I still take the Prime Minister at his word and I shall be writing to all the police departments pointing out what the Prime Minister has said.” How long would the ISA be in effect for, given that the heyday of the Communist insurgency in Malaya was long over? Lee referred to another speech he had given in the Legislative Assembly in 1959, in which he tied the continuation of the ISA in Singapore to that in Malaysia – that “there will be no abolition of the Emergency laws in Singapore until they have been abolished in the Federation”. For his definition of subversion, Lee cited the speech of the Yang diPertuan Negara in the opening of the Legislative Assembly in 1959, which Lee had written as the head of the government of the day: “Subversion” is any political activity designed to further the aims and interests not of our own people but of foreign powers; and by foreign powers we mean not just Russia and China, but also America and Formosa, and the Western bloc. “The position was made clear then,” Lee said. “It has always remained thus.” How China’s 19th century crises shaped a community in Singapore Lee related, from his perspective, the sequence of the events that led up to the ISA arrests of 1987. He said the Internal Security Department (ISD) had alerted the government of a network of Communist-sympathetic cells that was growing in the Catholic Church. Soon the MHA was detecting a trend of church publications coming out with articles that took sides on political issues. The permanent secretary of the Home Affairs Ministry met with the Roman Catholic Archbishop to raise the issue for the first time in July 1986, as did the minister himself later on. But the publications that concerned the government did not abate. Hence, when Pope John Paul II, the head of the Catholic Church, visited Singapore in November 1986, Lee raised the issue directly with him. Lee prefaced his remarks to the Pope by acknowledging the many contributions of the Catholic Church in Singapore. “But your Holiness,” Lee said, “there are some strange goings-on in the Church now. Some para-church workers and some priests are conducting themselves and acting as if I was President Marcos and the Government of Singapore has to be worked against, undermined and knocked down. This is very odd. I do not understand this.” Lee and his colleagues had then not known of Vincent Cheng, the alleged coordinator of the network, who was brought to their attention by the ISD, nor of many of those arrested, except for Teo Soh Lung, who had had an exchange with the Prime Minister during the select committee hearings on the Legal Profession (Amendment) Bill in 1986. The ISD traced Vincent Cheng’s influence to church groups like the Geylang Catholic Welfare Centre. “Why should we, out of pique fancies, stupidity, move into the church and cause an upset? Does it make sense?” Lee asked. Lee said that he had left it to his younger Cabinet colleagues who decided, after discussing with the ISD, that they would take action to arrest those involved in the network in May 1987. Lee agreed. “I left it to my younger colleagues, and I am pleased to say they did not lack resolve,” he said. “I played goalkeeper. I left it to them – explanations, everything theirs.” Singapore opposition shouldn’t use coalition of losing parties to challenge PAP: author However, it was for Tjong Yik Min, the ISD director who assumed his position in 1986, that Lee reserved special praise. “I have worked with 11 Directors of the Special Branch since June 1959,” Lee said. “The first one was an Englishman called Linsell, and 10 others – competent, professional men. The present one, Mr Tjong Yik Min, I would rate as one of the ablest I have worked with.” Lee proceeded to detail the curriculum vitae of Tjong, from his high school to his winning the coveted President’s Scholarship to his career in the civil service. “He knows his job. If he did not know his job, we would be in trouble. We would never find out about Mr Hendrickson, would we?” While Chiam was quoted by the press for characterising the Prime Minister’s speech as “one of the most important speeches by the PM I can recall”, his response to the speech in the Parliament chamber at the ensuing sitting struck a slightly different tone. “On Friday, the Prime Minister made a long speech,” Chiam said. “We were all enthralled by it. We did not want to interrupt him. But I thought what he said basically are now all out of date. It does not apply to modern Singapore.” Chiam also said basic common tenets of Marxism, as defined in the Penguin Dictionary of Politics (“I hear it is very reliable,” he said), were broad enough to even construe the PAP government as Marxist. “I look at this definition of Marxism, I note that there are some similarities to the PAP government’s philosophy – that ‘economic matters ultimately control political and cultural phenomena’. The PAP stresses on nothing but economic survival, which is uppermost in their minds. ‘We don’t want democracy, wasting our time talking and arguing over issues. What we want is economic growth, the more the better.’ Is this not what Marxism also advocates? The ultimate aim of society is for economic growth.” “Are Vincent Cheng and all his friends of the Gramsci-type, or are they of the early Second International or the early brand of Marxists?” asked Chiam. “Please let us know what they are really guilty of. And do not just say that they are promoting Marxism in Singapore.” Chiam continued to press the government for the commission of inquiry into the ISA arrests, which it originally promised. But Jayakumar replied, “Once we concluded that they were out to make political propaganda and to launch a denigration campaign and not to pursue legal redress, we decided against the Commission of Inquiry or it would only mean political theatre for the one or two persons who still make allegations.” Later in June 1988, Chiam asked Jayakumar in Parliament whether Teo Soh Lung and the other detainees would be released in time to stand in the upcoming general elections if they wanted to – to which Jayakumar replied that it was not yet possible to say. Francis Seow, however, was released on July 16 that year. Singapore had ‘agenda’ when criticising Hong Kong electoral reform, cables show Did Chiam try hard enough to fight the case for the 22 detainees in Parliament and in the public sphere? Or did Chiam back down after the “important speech” delivered by Lee Kuan Yew , as Chiam himself had characterised, in which Lee also laid down the ground rules for Chiam’s Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) to play by for its own political survival? J.B. Jeyaretnam, by then disqualified from Parliament, stood outside the Istana and called for the release of the ISA detainees about a week after the detainees had been arrested in May 1987. It was not the first time persons involved with the Workers’ Party were arrested under the ISA – back in 1982, two members of the Workers’ Party, who were also part of a group calling themselves the Singapore People’s Liberation Organisation, were detained for distributing subversive pamphlets. With Jeyaretnam outside the Istana were Wong Hong Toy and Jufrie Mahmood of the Workers’ Party, who were all charged in court for attempting to conduct an unlawful assembly, but were subsequently acquitted. Jeyaretnam did not stop at that. He held a press conference in London in August 1987 alongside Tan Wah Piow, the very person accused by the Singapore government of masterminding the alleged Marxist conspiracy. Jeyaretnam was in London to appeal to the Privy Council for the reversal of his convictions and for the reinstatement of his parliamentary seat. The press conference appeared to have been arranged for Jeyaretnam to brief the press on his Privy Council appeal, but the appearance of Tan, who had been exiled in London since the 1970s, trained the attention on the ISA arrests in Singapore that year. The Straits Times reported that the two men joined forces to denounce the Singapore government’s charges relating to the alleged Marxist conspiracy, and that they “confirmed their personal, if not political, alliance with a parting handshake”. Even for Jeyaretnam’s usually sympathetic biographer, Chris Lydgate, the London press conference was a misjudgment on Jeyaretnam’s part of the reaction back in Singapore. For sure, some Workers’ Party members were aggrieved and anxious over Jeyaretnam’s controversial press conference, on which Jeyaretnam had not consulted his party colleagues, because the Singapore government had specifically identified the party as the target of infiltration by the alleged Marxist actors. Rebellion in the Workers’ Party, which had been fomenting for some time, was to boil into an outright confrontation with Jeyaretnam. Chapter 15: Alliance Chiam forges a coalition In the late 1990s, Chiam had been publicly calling on the opposition to “go all out” and win a group representation constituency (GRC). He also began to suggest that the by-election strategy should be put aside in view of this goal. As the 2001 general election neared, Chiam even publicly mooted the possibility of Potong Pasir being absorbed into a neighbouring GRC, as Braddell Heights had been, and that he would be forced to contest in a GRC – as if to test the public’s reaction. He might also have been genuinely fearful of suffering the same fate as Sin Kek Tong with regard to the disappearance of Braddell Heights from the electoral map. To do so, the opposition would have to “present a united front”, Chiam said, implying also that he expected other opposition politicians to step up. Over the years, Low Thia Khiang from the Workers’ Party had begun to gradually indicate an openness to the idea of moving out of his single-seat ward of Hougang to contest in a GRC. The GRC system had to be surmounted by the opposition for them to grow in spite of such hindrances to their full political participation, since there were no signs of such hindrances going away. And there were always new measures thrown out, particularly before elections, that shackled the opposition. In May 2000, for instance, a new law was passed banning political parties from receiving foreign donations, and restricting how much they could accept from anonymous sources. This further constrained the cash-strapped opposition parties, which Singaporeans had always been wary of supporting publicly. By April 2001, Chiam was able to get the NSP, the Pertubuhan Kebangsaan Melayu Singapura (PKMS) and two smaller parties – the Singapore Justice Party and the Singapore National Front (SNF)– to join his alliance of parties and submit an application to register the coalition with the Registry of Societies. It was named the Singapore Democratic Alliance (SDA); the similarity of its name with the SDP’s made it seem almost as if Chiam had named it in defiance of having lost control of the SDP, the party Chiam had founded and whose name he continued to cherish. Singapore election: why lots of parties will make little difference The goal that galvanised the SDA’s constituent parties was winning its first GRC. In his attempts to form a good GRC team, Chiam found it hard to get candidates from the Malay community, and so he went against the preferences of a number of SDA members to pull in the Malay-based PKMS and SNF parties, the latter of which was formed by a breakaway faction of the former party. Eventually though, the SNF decided to not register itself under the alliance because of unresolved debates with the SDA’s lead players about multiracialism and race-based politics. During the debates on the GRC system back in 1988, when Goh Chok Tong had made the suggestion to Chiam that he should team up with the PKMS, Chiam said Goh’s suggestion was “just to poke fun at the SDP”. “The SDP will never for the sake of political expediency join the PKMS with a view to get Malay candidates to stand in GRCs,” Chiam wrote emphatically in a letter to The Straits Times . “The very thought of such an idea nauseates us.” Others like Eric Tan, a long-time central executive committee member, were well aware of PKMS’ outlier status given its “different ideology”; its leader had, back in 1988, enunciated his party’s main role to “fight for Malay rights as recognised in the Singapore Constitution”. The PKMS also attracted controversy when it was forced to clarify, during the 2001 general election, whether it had a foreign agenda given its historical relationship with the United Malays National Organisation (Umno), Malaysia’s ruling party. The PKMS had its post-war origins as the Singapore branch of Umno, and was renamed the PKMS when Singapore political parties were forbidden from affiliating themselves with foreign counterparts after independence. When disagreement between Singapore and Malaysia over the sovereignty of the disputed islet of Pedra Branca flared up in the early 1990s, the PKMS controversially sided with the Malaysian government. Chiam managed to get the agreement of the constituent parties of the SDA for him to sit as the chairman of the alliance, additionally giving him the powers to appoint the secretary general, vice-chairman and other top officials of the SDA. Moreover, a constitutional provision was made that SDA members elected into Parliament would not be able to be expelled, in what appeared to have been a lesson Chiam had learned from the ugly split in the SDP. Even if a constituent party were to leave the alliance, its MPs, if it had any elected, would have to stay with the alliance. In May 2001, another development in the opposition landscape took place – after almost 10 years as an MP, Low Thia Khiang assumed the position of secretary general of the Workers’ Party, taking over from Jeyaretnam. It was reported that Jeyaretnam had agreed to step down to “let new blood take over the leadership”, allowing Low to be elected to the position unopposed. Subsequent rumblings suggested that the leadership transition was not as smooth as had been publicly portrayed, when some disenchanted party cadres took to the platform of Think Centre, an NGO, to question the legality of the party conference during which Low had been elected leader. Think Centre had been involved in a “Save JBJ” campaign to raise funds to settle Jeyaretnam’s debts of almost S$550,000 arising from defamation suits against PAP leaders so that Jeyaretnam could qualify to stand as a candidate again at the upcoming general election, but received far less than their targeted amount. Jeyaretnam and his supporters wanted the party to also raise funds to settle his debts. But Jeyaretnam, realising that most of the party cadres were not in favour of that, decided the most decent thing for him to do was to step down. “I knew, even before 2001, that they weren’t prepared to go along with me and they found me a liability,” Jeyaretnam said. Since then, Jeyaretnam had been clearly disgruntled with the new developments in the Workers’ Party and with the opposition movement as a whole. As the opposition parties were preparing for the 2006 general election, he accused both Chiam and Low for not being daring enough to challenge and change Singapore ’s political system. Low’s ascent to the leadership of the Workers’ Party marked a fresh start, a development that Chiam certainly tried to tap. Chiam sent out invitations to the SDP and the Workers’ Party to join his fledgling alliance, telling them that “Singaporeans do not want small parties but a strong group against the PAP”. But his overtures were not met with commensurate enthusiasm. The SDP predictably declined Chiam’s invitation. “Not at this stage,” SDP leader Chee Soon Juan said. “We feel that the beliefs and policies of the party can be more effectively communicated if it remains as it is.” Naturally, the elephant in the room – his clash with Chiam in the SDP in 1993 – was raised, to which Chee responded: “I don’t think the clash of personalities should influence the course of opposition politics in Singapore.” The Workers’ Party also declined. Low, in a 2016 interview, said that he had been under “immense pressure” in 2001 to join the SDA. He decided, however, that it was more important to build up the Workers’ Party and preserve its legacy. He did not feel that his party had reached a stage where it could contribute to an alliance. Clearly, as he admitted, he also feared a repeat of the 1997 election, when the PAP had used the internal rifts within the SDP to “tar all opposition parties with the same brush”. As a result, the opposition lost the ground that it had gained in 1991, although Low was immune to this phenomenon in Hougang. This was why the Workers’ Party had decided after the 1997 election to “forge its own path”, he said. The CEC of the Workers’ Party had apparently pondered deeply on the invitation to join the SDA. Low was reportedly insistent that the Workers’ Party had to have control over its alliance partners and how they acted, which would imply that he was fine working with Chiam but found some of the other constituent parties of the SDA questionable. Even Eric Tan’s clique in the Workers’ Party, which was involved with the discussions behind the formation of the SDA ultimately decided against the idea of joining the SDA on the principle that a party had to have “consistent branding”. The SDP and the Workers’ Party were each larger in membership size than the parties that joined the SDA – with the possible exception of PKMS – and also stood above those smaller parties in stature by virtue of having had elected MPs among their ranks. They understandably did not see the need for collective strength as urgently.