High school students debate hot political issues

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.