Lankan born S'pore Opposition leader dies

Veteran Singapore politician J.B. Jeyaretnam, who was born in 1926 in Jaffna, 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 Jeyaretnam was a thorn in the side of Singapore's Minister Mentor Lee Kuan-yew.

Jeyaretnam trained as a lawyer in Britain before making his home in Singapore. He served as an MP from 1981 to 1986 and from 1997 to 2001.