SHAH ALAM: Having just declared the winner of the Cambridge Intervarsity Debating Competition in the United Kingdom two weeks ago, Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) debaters Mohd Mifzal Mohd Murshid Kieron and Jasmine Ho Abdullah hopes to repeat the success at another prestigious debate championship in Dec.
The duo, who are third year law students, are working doubly hard to compete in the World Universities Debating Championship scheduled to take place in Thessaloniki, Greece where they will be pitted against 400 team of debaters from various universities.
Mifzal and Ho would be focusing on topics such as the refugee crisis, the Iraq, Syria and Islamic State conflicts, Islamophobia as well as the gun control issue in America for the championship.
"We have to identify the topics because motions are not released beforehand and we are given 15 minutes to prepare once it is released.
"So, we have to be ready for just about any issue. The European refugee crisis and refugee crisis in general are very hot topics this year and is something we should all be concerned about," he said when met at the UiTM Chancellery building today.
Ho said the championship in Greece was something they had looked forward.
"We have been preparing for the world championship for a long time. It has always been our end goal. For every small success we achieved locally, we kept in mind that we wanted to go to the world championship.
"Now that we are able, we are preparing by following speakers that we admire, reading and training almost everyday and during active seasons and near competitions.
"We also talk to lecturers that have expert opinion on various issues and the Student Affairs Department also assist in getting resources like magazines for us to read up," said Ho.
When in Greece, both Ho and Mifzal will also be collaborating with the Malaysian and international community debate teams to pool resources to provide basic necessities to be given to refugees.
Mifzal and Ho emerged champion in the Cambridge Intervarsity Debating Competition (Cambridge IV) that took place on Nov 20 and 21.
They had successfully defended the motion titled " This House believes that the international community should pay countries near to conflict zones to process, settle and restrict the further movement of refugees.'
Mifzal said one of the points that had won the judges over were that they had correctly identified the reasons many different countries in the world today accept or reject refugees.
"We are happy and glad to be the first Asian university to win. Consistently for the last five to seven years, we have been in top 30 ranking universities for debating in the world. But unfortunately, we haven't had the honour of any significant international success so I am glad we have put UiTM on the map," he added.
They were up against 250 participants representing 128 teams from various universities including Cambridge University, Harvard University, Oxford University, the London School of Economics, University of Toronto, Tel Aviv University, Cornell University and the Trinity College Dublin.
UiTM deputy vice-chancellor (academic and international) Prof Dr Suhaimi Abdul Talib said the university was very proud of Mifzal and Ho.
"This is an exceptional achievement for UiTM and the country as well as Asian universities because this is the first time that this championship was won by an Asian team. The other sucess is that Mifzal and Ho had participated in the Open English Language category," said Suhaimi.