R.I.P. Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam 1926 - 2008

"I get my strength from somewhere else, if you know what I mean," Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam said in an interview with AFP in 2006. "I refuse to conform to the world." Veteran Singapore opposition leader J.B. Jeyaretnam, who died Tuesday, waged a long and lonely campaign for greater political freedom in the tightly governed city-state. He was attempting a fresh political comeback when he succumbed to heart failure. The 82-year-old British-trained lawyer and former MP was the nemesis of Singapore's iron-fisted founding leader Lee Kuan Yew, 85, whose People's Action Party (PAP) will celebrate 50 uninterrupted years in power in 2009. "I haven't got very many more years," Jeyaretnam said in July at the launch of the new Reform Party, which was to be his vehicle for a comeback after years in the political wilderness. Will you miss the old man, who is always at your favourite neighbourhood MRT Station, selling books and touting "the truth"? It's the end of an era.