SINGAPORE, July 19 — Kenneth Jeyaretnam, the secretary-general of Singapore’s Reform Party who sought to carry on the political legacy of his father, Opposition pioneer JB Jeyaretnam, has died aged 67.

His wife, Amanda Jeyaretnam, announced his death in a Facebook post today, saying he had “died peacefully in his sleep surrounded by family”.

She said funeral arrangements for a small family service were still being finalised, with a memorial to celebrate his life to be held at a later date.

“Thank you for your love and support and to everyone who managed to visit him in the hospital, please know it meant a lot to him,” she wrote.

The Facebook post did not disclose a cause of death.

Jeyaretnam was the elder son of the late Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, better known as JBJ, the trailblazing Opposition politician who became the first Opposition MP elected to Singapore’s Parliament after independence in 1965 and founded the Reform Party in 2008.

Educated at the United World College of South East Asia and Charterhouse School in England, Jeyaretnam graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1983 with double first-class honours in economics.

He began his career as a credit analyst at Wardley, HSBC’s merchant banking arm, before moving to Continental Bank, Banque Indosuez, Lehman Brothers and Nomura International.

Following his father’s death in September 2008, he took over the leadership of the Reform Party in April 2009, seeking to continue the political movement JBJ had established months earlier.

Jeyaretnam led the party into three general elections, contesting West Coast GRC in 2011 and 2015 before taking on then prime minister Lee Hsien Loong’s People’s Action Party team in Ang Mo Kio GRC in 2020. The Reform Party failed to win any seats in those contests.

He also contested the 2013 Punggol East by-election, triggered by the resignation of People’s Action Party MP Michael Palmer over an extramarital affair. Jeyaretnam and Singapore Democratic Alliance candidate Desmond Lim together secured less than 2 per cent of the vote, as Workers’ Party candidate Lee Li Lian won the four-cornered contest.

Although he never won elected office, Jeyaretnam remained a prominent Opposition voice for more than a decade, leading the Reform Party founded by his father and campaigning for a more competitive political landscape in Singapore.