On Thai Worlds and a debater's death

I think it's day 3 or day 4 at World Universities Debating Championship 2008 at Assumption University. I could have gone there if I didn't choose to go to Canada. Robert Jed Malayang, a former colleague at Silliman University Debate Society is attending as an adjudicator together with Samantha Tornilla, a debate-friend from University of the Philippines-Cebu. Both of them are probably the only participants from the Visayan Debate Circle. I'm not sure.

I was just lazily hanging around my brother's room today and I decided to check my Facebook account from some updates. Certainly, there were updates indeed (more about Assumption Worlds). A debater from Monash University created a group that gives round-by-round update for Facebook debaters who weren't able to go to Worlds 2008.

Updates were good but I didn't see anything about Ateneo de Manila University debaters. They could have not missed Worlds 2008 because they are Ateneo. These debaters never misses any important international debates and they shouldn't. I was a little bit worried since I didn't see any name of ateneo in the updates. I checked back at the Worlds 2008 website to verify. I was greatly relieved to see in the list of attendees that Ateneo is part of the competition. They've sent 5 teams and 5 adjudicators (just like Oxford Union).

I began to browse Colm Flynn's blog about the World's motions. Some motions are really interesting and I find the 3rd round motion hard to debate. I also clicked the link in Colm's blog that directed me into another debate blog of Alfred Snider, an American professor and former debater. Alfred writes his entries about his opinionated responses toward Worlds, a more personal outlook rather than a blog trying to be unbias. He relates his experience as to what transpired in a day to day basis.

Both Colm and Alfred's had entries about Benazir Bhutto assassination. She was practically the talk of the town during the opening of Worlds 2008. I also knew that Benazir Bhutto was a former debater and a former president of Oxford Union. She went to school from Harvard University to Oxford University. I wasn't ultimately shocked but was a little bit of surprised for the new information.

While Benazir was the president of Oxford Union, consequently, Arianna Huffington was the president of Cambridge Union. In Arianna's post, she recalls what was Benazir Bhutto like. She also asked Benazir to blog, and Huffington provided a portion of what she [Benazir] wrote this fall.

"I long ago realized that my personal life was to be subjugated to my political responsibilities. When my democratically elected father, Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was arrested in 1977 and subsequently murdered, the mantle of leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party, our nation's largest, nationwide grassroots political structure, was suddenly thrust upon me.It was not the life I planned, but it is the life I have. My husband and children accept and understand that my political responsibilities to the people of Pakistan come first, as painful as that personally is to all of us. I would like to be planning my son's move to his first year at college later this month, but instead I am planning my return to Pakistan and my party's parliamentary election campaign.

I didn't choose this life. It chose me."

Read the whole post of Arianna Huffington and Benazir Bhutto as presented by the links. Benazir's 19-year old son will likely be name the successor of Pakistan People's Party (PPP). He's currently in Oxford University. To read more about this, click here.