BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Singapore opposition leader dies

Earlier this year Mr Jeyaretnam formed a new opposition partyVeteran Singapore politician JB Jeyaretnam has died of heart failure in a Singapore hospital, aged 82.He was the first to break a government monopoly on power in Singapore when he won a seat in parliament in 1981. He had been forced into bankruptcy over defamation cases won by the government but was planning a new run for office. Dubbed the Grand Old Man of opposition politics, analysts said Mr Jeyaretnam was a thorn in the side of Singapore's Minister Mentor Lee Kuan-yew. Born in 1926 in Jaffna, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Mr Jeyaretnam trained as a lawyer in Britain before making his home in Singapore. Political injusticesHe served as an MP from 1981 to 1986 and from 1997 to 2001. His first victory, as standard bearer for the Workers' Party, came when he defeated the People's Action Party (PAP) of founding prime minister of independent Singapore Mr Lee. He was returned to parliament in 1984 but in 1986 was found guilty of making a false declaration of his party's accounts and fined a sum which made him liable to expulsion from the legislature. He was disqualified from sitting in parliament until 1991, and disbarred from legal practice. The Privy Council in Britain ruled in 1988 that he had been wrongly disbarred in "a grievous injustice".