Debate Sri Lanka Steps Up

A year back young university law students did Sri Lanka proud, "talking" their way right to the top, at the 5th Annual National Law School Parliamentary Debate Championship organized by the National Law School of India University. Now the schools debating of the southern part of the Indian subcontinent are also contributing the Sri Lankan Debating success

The Faculty of Law Moot Court and Debating Society, Sri Lanka recently hosted the largest Debating Championships for selecting the Sri Lankan National Schools' Debating team for WSDC 2007. The tournament was an ideal launch pad for preparation for future involvement in the area of “South Asian Debating”.

This is the second time the event was held, and it was a good experience for the students, as it was something quite new to most of them. The style of debating they used for the tournament was the WSDC format, and since most students get to usually debate under the prepared style of debating, this was good exposure for them. About 130 participants from over 25 schools has participated in the championships.
The competition had five preliminary rounds and all of the teams had to participate in each round. "The tournament functioned on a win point margin basis, and every team had to participate in all five rounds.

The Themes of the rounds were

1. International terrorism
2. Sri Lankan affairs
3. Climate change
4. God and science
5. Dangerous sports.

These themes were given to the contestants at a workshop that was held prior to the tournament.

Champion:
Bishop’s College, Team A.

Champion Team Members were:
Sandaruwani de Silva (16),
Keshia Pendigrast (17)
Thameena Zarani (16),

The Motion for the final debate was:
This house believes that the democratic ideal should extend to the US foreign policy.

Best Speaker of the Final:
Zara Cadar, Asian International School

Though the majority of the participating schools were from Colombo, the competition also saw a number of schools form Galle, Kandy and Negombo, proving the interest for debating, throughout Sri Lanka.

A Big V to the Debating Movement of South Asia

(Source: The Sunday Times Online)