BAC Asian Parliamentary 2024
BAC Debate Club Hosts their Inaugural Asian Parliamentary Debate Tournament
Every year, the BAC Debate Club hosts a tournament open to students inside and outside of the institution. Their usual annual tournament, BACDO, is one that employs the British Parliamentary format. This year, they decided to shake things up by organising a tournament with a different format: Asian Parliamentary!
The difference between Asian Parliamentary and British Parliamentary lies in the number of teams and how many speakers each team has. Where British Parliamentary has four teams: Opening Government, Opening Opposition, Closing Government and Closing Opposition, with each team consisting of two speakers, Asian Parliamentary has just two teams: Government and Opposition, with each team having three speakers.
The competition was split into novice and open category, with students from all over the world showing up to debate! There were students from Vietnam, India, Indonesia, and of course, local students from universities all around Malaysia, including BAC's very own debaters.
On the first day of the competition, students gathered over Zoom for the preliminaries. They debated motions relating to academic piracy, tertiary education, relationships, the global south and war criminals. Although a number of the teams were participating in the novice rounds, their points were good enough that they were able to break in the open category! This means that they participated in the open category from the quarterfinals onwards!
The quarterfinals brought out motions about different types of relationships, like romantic, parasocial and relationships originating from dating apps. The competition heated up in the semifinals with motions about religion. Debaters were fired up, ready to proceed into the finals, but only two teams could proceed: "pookies" and "ICA.
In open finals, the teams debated on a finance related motion. Here's what BAC Debate Club President, Megan had to say: "Open finals was a dog fight between the teams! We had ICA from Philippines and a team called "pookies". Both teams did amazing, but ultimately ICA came out on top!"
Novice finals saw teams "Kannum Kannum Nokia" and "The Tea Spillers" duke it out on a religion related motion, with "Kannum Kannum Nokia" coming out on top!
BAC wishes a big congratulations to all the winners of the competition! They all debated masterfully, and the committee handled the event very well! The event was a wonderful one, with interesting arguments and showcased skills from all over the world.
"Thank you for the wonderful tournament to the [organising committee] and [Core Adjudication Panel]! ICA had a wonderful time and we’re incredibly grateful for the lovely weekend!" said Bea Legaspi from team "ICA."
If you're interested in joining the BAC Debate Club for their next competition or their weekly training sessions, you can click the button below or visit their Instagram to learn more!
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