Limkokwing University of Creative Technology hosted the world’s biggest high school debate championship from the 20th to 23rd February 2014. A total of 69 high schools from across Malaysia took part in this competition.

The semifinals brought on an interesting motion, which said ‘Assassinating Political Leaders as a legitimate tool of war,’ which saw the students engaging in a heated and intelligent argument, both sides bringing forth valid points to support their argument.

The Opening Government speakers, Kenneth Foo and Ng Yong Sheng from SMK Damansara Jaya opened the debate with an argument that ‘overly authoritative political leaders should be eliminated because their sovereignty as a leader is not legitimate’, a notion which became largely the basis of the Government’s argument.

The Opening government went on to argue that history has shown that peace accords fail with tyrant leaders, therefore ‘eliminating them as quickly as possible is the only solution; for the good of the country and the people’.

When taking the stage, Opening Opposition’s Eliza Chow, also from SMK Damansara Jaya, rebutted the Government’s statement, saying that trials always bring perpetrators to justice, which might be a death sentence if deemed fit, so assassinating someone without a fair trial and a chance to defend themselves is inhuman.

Her team mate, Evan Wong, another SMK Damansara Jaya student, supported her argument, pointing out that bringing tyrants to trial prosecutes the very ideology they stand for, hence crippling the support from their followers, rather than turning them into martyrs, which assassination will definitely do.

The Closing Government’s Amrit Agastia and Aishwarya Adaikalaraj from SMK Sri Aman concluded their side’s argument by saying most of the extremist political leaders use unethical warfare methods, like chemicals and nuclear weapons, and there is always a lot of evidence against them, which means they are already proven guilty of the crime, and a court trial is unnecessary. They also voiced out that this kind of leaders will actively avoid capture and prosecution, and while still waiting to bring them to court, they will continue perpetrating autocracy.

For their closing argument, Opposition’s Lim Le Shaun and Levintharan Kuruparam from the Methodist Boys Secondary School argued that assassination only merely removes the leader, it does not kill the ideology, and also antagonizes and enrages the followers and can cause them to commit more crimes. Rather, they proposed a fair trial, in which the extremist leaders’ ideologies can be publicly crashed, thus stand a chance to change their followers’ minds.

Opening opposition’s Eliza Chow and Evan Wong, and closing opposition’s Levintharan Kuruparam and Lim Le Shaun emerged as victors of the round, and made it through to the finale.

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