FDS holds annual Parliamentary Debating Competition
The Forman Debating Society, after successfully hosting its intra-declamations competition earlier this month, set out to host their annual Parliamentary Debating Competition. The event was held from 23rd to 24th October 2012 and was met with participants who were all eager to win.
In this event, there were 8 teams selected both for English and Urdu section for the competition. Each team, consisting of 3 speakers each, even allotted themselves various team-names to create a level of humor in the somewhat serious debating sessions.
The program consisted of three rounds, first being the knock-out round from which the qualifiers entered the semi-finals, leading up to the final round. Miss Alvina Waseem, the advisor for FDS; Salman Shahid , Ali Zafar (ex-GC President), Mehreen Kasana, Muhammad Adeel and Sohail Ahmed were invited as adjudicators for the two-day competition.
As the competition went underway, it became clear that the topics that were to be discussed, argued and defended were those that dealt with global issues, whether of a social or an economical standpoint. The first topic, for the knockout round was ‘The house would uphold Ban on YouTube’. Looking at the recent protests and riots regarding the controversial video on YouTube, this topic remained very relevant and hence ideal for debate.
After the knockout challenge, 4 teams of English and Urdu qualified to the semi finals. Here both Urdu and English teams were given the topic; “The house believes Blasphemy laws should be repealed.” After this, the two teams from Urdu and English were chosen and announced. This was the end of the first day of the competition.
On 24th October, the final round of the competition began with the topic ‘The house would re-elect Obama.’ Considering that these days the presidential elections between Mitt Romney and Obama are underway, this debate topic was a great way to get the differing opinions from our fellow speakers on who should be considered as the next President of USA.
Runners-up for English debates were team members Muhammad Omer Imran, Sidra Bashir and Seerat Khan. While, Naima Farooq (President of FDS) along with her team members Novera Hassan and Soha Naveed/ Ammaz Shabbir came in first. Furthermore, Novera Hassan won Best Speaker for English.
On the Urdu front, runners-up were Azib Gill, Haris Khan and Anum Shoukat. The winners of the Urdu debates were Osama Khalid, who also won the Best speaker award; Uzair Khan and Abdul Rehman.
