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Let’s put it to Debate

After two weeks of intense preparation and research, my partner Kirsty and I from the Glasgow Gaelic School made strides into Hutcheson’s Grammar School to compete in the Donald Dewar Memorial Debating tournament.

We set out with the goal to win the debate against the host school itself with the proposition that the UK should have boycotted the 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) in Sri Lanka.

The Donald Dewar Memorial Debating Tournament was set up by The Law Society of Scotland in 1999 and was created to remember the life, work and passion Of Donald Dewar, the first First Minister of Scotland. And since 2006, the finals have been held in the Scottish Parliament.

What better to commemorate Dewar, than by promoting the development of our youths understanding of international affairs and politics and to then hold the final in the Scottish Parliament, the Parliament that he fought for?

The motion at hand was one of the more difficult to be selected. The commonwealth member Sri Lanka faced a civil war for 26 years between the Sri Lankan Government and The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (also known as the Tamil Tigers), a secessionist group advocating the creation of a Tamil country independent of Sri Lanka.

In the closing months of the war the President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, has allegedly committed war crimes in grave breach of the Geneva Convention and broken principles set out by the Harare Declaration that all Commonwealth members should abide by during and after the war.

Therefore the subsequent chairing of the CHOGM in Sri Lanka by President Rajapaksa has caused great uproar in the media and his rejection of UN investigations into Human Rights abuses in the country have only raised international speculation.

I was up first, my partner and I taking a much more aggressive yet focused style of speech, whereas the opposition used a calmer fashion.

We lost, but we then got to enjoy watching the other two participating schools, Dumbarton Academy and The Glasgow Academy, in their heat. It was enlightening to see how others dealt with the same difficult motion as we had and use different approaches of voicing their arguments.

The debate was a good learning experience, involving public speaking, competition and research. The tournament taught you how to argue a point of view that you didn’t agree with. It forces you to look at both sides of an argument, making you develop a wider and more analytical way of thinking.

I recommend that others try their hand at debating, even if they do not particularly want to go into Law or Politics as it helps raise awareness of the issues in the world affecting young people. I enjoyed the night and enjoyed shaking hands and talking with friendly people with the same interest and ambitions as me. And I hope to see more keen debaters in the future at events like this.

 

Adam Smith


published 11/06/2014 by Online Submission
last update 28/05/2014

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