VETERAN politician J.B. Jeyaretnam has agreed to represent Dr Chee Soon Juan and his sister Ms Chee Siok Chin as they face the prospect of being charged with contempt of court.

Speaking from his Johor Baru home last night, Mr Jeyaretnam said: 'The Chees approached me and I said yes.'

However, he said he would not be able to make the court date today and had asked Dr Chee to apply for the show-cause hearing to be adjourned.

The Chees are due in court this afternoon to explain their conduct during a three-day High Court hearing to assess damages in a defamation suit brought against them by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew.

Dr Chee, the leader of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), and Ms Chee could not be reached for comment.

Mr Jeyaretnam, 82, started his law practice again last year, shortly after being discharged from bankruptcy.

He was declared a bankrupt in 2001 after failing to pay damages for defaming, among others, Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, Deputy Prime Minister S. Jayakumar and organisers of the 1995 Tamil Language Week.

Last month, the former leader of the Workers' Party and independent Singapore's first opposition MP also filed an application to register a new political party, called the Reform Party.

The revelation that the two prominent opposition politicians will team up in court comes in a week already filled with courtroom drama.

On Wednesday, at the end of the hearing to assess damages, Justice Belinda Ang had asked the Chees: 'Tell me why you should not be cited for contempt of court.'

She cited 15 occasions on which they overstepped the line, eight involving Dr Chee and seven involving Ms Chee, an SDP member.

These showed they had 'scandalised the court, adversely affected the administration of justice and impugned the dignity and the authority of the court', she said.

The Chees have to appear before Justice Ang at 2.30pm today to show cause why they should not be cited for contempt of court.

Dr Chee served eight days in jail for contempt of court in 2006.

That incident stemmed from a statement he made about the judiciary during his bankruptcy hearings in February 2006.

He repeated it to the media outside court, posted it on the SDP website and circulated it to individuals and agencies here and abroad.

In it, he made allegations about the independence of the judiciary and the judges, and about the courts having links to the ruling People's Action Party.

Justice Lai Siu Chiu, who sentenced Dr Chee to one day's jail and a $6,000 fine, called it one of the worst cases of contempt of court here.

Dr Chee did not pay the fine, and so spent an additional seven days in jail.

The case was unprecedented then as it had marked the first time anyone had been sentenced to jail for the offence. Previous offenders had been given fines.

Pressing for a jail term, Second Solicitor-General Lee Seiu Kin said that previous attacks differed from Dr Chee's in that they did not involve 'direct and blatant attacks on the judiciary'. In those cases, the accused had also apologised.

Lawyers said contempt-of- court cases tend to be rare in Singapore. When they do occur, they typically involve a single instance of contempt.

This time around, the judge cited multiple instances.

The Supreme Court of Judicature Act imposes no maximum limit to the length of the jail term or the fine amount.