High school students debate hot political issues

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

After over an hour of intense debate, Sahil Nantani, Natasha Djaja and Vanessa Budiharja from Sekolah Pelita Harapan, Tangerang, Banten Province, managed to outwit Intan Haddijah, Richard Anggoro and Tirza Reinata from SMU 34 Jakarta, and took home the top trophy in the 2003 National School Debating Championships late on Monday.

The six students had previously been involved in a heated debate on whether provincial government officials should be natives of the area in which they worked.

Natasha from Sekolah Pelita Harapan said the notion that provincial government officials had to be natives undermined democracy as people were provided with limited choices on who would govern their province.

Reiterating the views of his Natasha, Sahil asked: "How could you bar a non-native from becoming a provincial government official?"

Intan, a student from SMU 34 Jakarta, took the opposite view. Provincial government officials had to be born and raised in the province concerned as native sons would have a better understanding of the area and therefore would pay more attention to local aspirations.

Another representative from Sekolah Pelita Harapan, Vanessa, rebutted Intan's statement by saying that such a claim was an insult to democracy.

Those debating the motion during the final round had successfully survived a series of similar debates during the 2003 National School Debating Championships, which were held here between Friday and Wednesday. The contest featured teams of three trying to outwit one another in parliamentary-style debates, with one team defending a motion and the other attacking it.

Thirty-two teams from 19 provinces have taken part in the championship. The eight best individual speakers will be trained as candidates for the Indonesian team taking part in the World Schools Debating Championship 2003 in Lima, Peru.

Ria Nuri Darmawan, event organizing committee chairwoman, told The Jakarta Post that the event was aimed at promoting free speech and critical thinking, which she said were seriously lacking in the country.

She said that the topics to be debated by the contestants -- disclosed only 30 minutes before the contest began -- ranged from a quota for women in the legislature and whether or not the government should stop sending workers abroad to whether former athletes should receive pensions upon their retirement.

"Obviously, contestants must have up-to-date knowledge on current affairs," she said.

On Tuesday, the contestants met a number of House of the Representatives members, with some of them staging a debate in front of the legislators.

"Four selected contestants staged a debate in front of the members of the House in Bahasa Indonesia so that the legislators could understand what they were debating," one member of the organizing committee told the Post.

She was quick to add that the debate was also aimed at showing House members how true parliamentary-style debates should be conducted.