A small tribute to JBJ
30 September 2008

DW informed me that Joshua Benjamin Jeyaratnam died today. This makes me sad.

If it wasn’t for him, our generation wouldn’t even be aware that dissent, true dissent, was possible in Singapore. The incumbents really had a problem with him because he was good. The problem was he didn’t believe in the myth — the rest of us apathetically, resignedly accept it.

If he had joined the establishment he would have been amazing, but he wasn’t willing to compromise. One wonders if they will now say anything nice about him.

(Nice job, Straits Times. It’s ‘peddle’, not ‘pedal’. FFS, your sub-editor needs to be fired. For those unfamiliar with Singapore politics, JBJ’s books were never sold in shops — he peddled them outside shopping centres and MRT stations, Neil and I bought some years ago, before we, er, ‘quit’. Heh.)

Earlier posts about JBJ:

I’m sure I’ve got more in my old hand-coded archives.

3 Comments

  1. JBJ was the guy who used to stand outside centerpoint, selling his books, right?

    Comment by kristen — 30 September 2008 @ 5:04 pm

  2. Yup. I always felt bad that most people avoided him like the plague.

    Comment by Andrea — 30 September 2008 @ 5:27 pm

  3. When Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister and son of the former prime minister who ruled with an iron fist for something like 30 years appends his condolences with accusations that JBJ was out to demolish the country's system of government, I think we can call him ungracious.

    http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/news/stories/200…

    Of course, it depends on what the definition of a country's system of government is.

    Comment by Andrea — 1 October 2008 @ 12:29 pm

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