God's favor in Royales debate

Here i want to share with you the testimony to God :-) I fasted and prayed for God's favor for the tournament. and He answered them in a miraculous way:

First round, we met UTM2, we as gov, debated over selling organ issue. Luckily I'd read sth on it in The Economist and used some of the facts from there. At least we have experience with this motion, and the oppenent didn't have structure and substantive argument, we won.

Second round, we as opp, against UTM3, debated over water privatisation issue. The gov set a very narrow case, said they want semi-privatisation in water supply, which's already in the status quo, just that they want it to be implemented state by state, like Selangor first, then Kelantan, and they said every state has different private company to govern the water supply, hence they claimed they are not proposing status quo, just some improvement on status quo. Luckily we prepare a "full-privatisation" case (we thought they'd come up with something like re-nationalise thingy, as the motion stated " should not be privatised") and we won over them for this round.

I think two rounds of winning is enough to boost our self-esteem. I think that's how God prepared us, to face UiTM1, in our third round, haa haa, and it's a humour round. Sooner or later we're going to meet them anyway, so i still think it's God's favor for us to meet them during humour round. We didn't know what they as d gov were proposing until the 6th min of daniel's speech. Motion : Frailty, thy name is women. They went with it as it is, saying women are weak, hence they want them to cover up themselves with black cloth (like those saudi arabia women we saw in KLCC), justified by the fact that it's in the teaching of Islam, and two more justification which i've forgotten. and women who do so will be pampered, like, they were to follow their husband wherever they go, so (i think this is funny) the husband has the responsibility to chauffer them around ..etc. we came out with something like discrimination to women thingy and..we knew we were skrewed. jerry and anthony still able to came up with some funny things, but I was too panic to e funny. and our stance wasn't strong enough la, luckily the margin is clear, not thrashing.

Then fourth round, we met UMS 3, whom we met again during quarter round and both round also defeated by them. we debated over protectionism by WTO on the ground of environment. we were gov. we set the case very wrongly. We set it in US instead of 3rd world countries, and want the latter to accept GMF technology so they would need less land to produce crop, hence cut down less trees, hence decrease deforestation rate. later alia expalined to me what does this motion actually mean. no wonder the chair, mr omar, was kinda pissed of wt us. suppose protectionism is on 3rd world countries, not 1st world, hence we were to give the former a say in their countries' development, whether to sascrifice their environment or not. because under the control of WTO, we should reach certain development stages as they have set for us, rite? we don't know much about this WTO and protectionism thing, and didn't quite understand what did it mean by " on the ground of environment", we set up our case on the 30th min prep time, and we let jerry veto it because there's no point to argue further. and we learnt a hard lesson from this round.

fifth round, we met UTM 3, again. fea's team also met UTM1 before, hence we say mildred's team and us became enemy in this tournament, ha. we debated over prisoner in guantanamo bay should be trial in military tribunal. we know what's guantanamo bay for, but didn't know how military tribunal function..we as gov, saying it's justified to punish those war criminal harshly if they found guilty, and those innocent will be released after the trial, rather than keeping all those "suspected" war criminals in there, torturing them for terrorist group information. it's a silent round. we won. as a whole, we manage to break by 3-2.

in quarter, we debated over "hired surrogacy mothers". we as opp. but we didn't quite argue with the "hired" term, rather, we say we should allow surrogacy mothers..which's not the point of the debate. it didn't quite occur to me until during the DPM's speech that i realise it's money that we were clashing. but my argument didn't really have anything to do with it, and we couldn't come up with anything to save our case,i talked about the right to parenthood and positive ramification of surrogacy. the point is, both sides already agree on surrogacy, just that the gov argued that surrogate mothers should do it voluntarily, not being hired. besides, jerry already told our split..then anthony came up rebutting "we served both desperate parties by hiring surrogate mothers". Mr latiff said this point came in too late, hence we lost. i agreed. we learnt a great lesson though, finding the crux of the debate.

I have to admit i learnt even more by sitting there and watching people debate. observing the way they argued and analysed the case, really feel the gap between us, down the stage, and them, on the stage, and the trophies in their hands. more trainings? definitely. but it's not enough. we should try out every possible way to improve ourselves, like watching video clips of final round in several tournaments and learn the way they debate. all and all, this's God's favor in us for this tournament, not to mention the great time we spent together in Kuching town , hee hee