AEO 2014: No Indonesian Team in This Year's Main Final

The main final of the 2014 Asian English Olympics debate competition will have no locals, unlike last year's which saw all of the finalists come from Indonesia. In the semifinals, the last standing Indonesians, Binus International A (Melisa Irene & Wilson Salim) and Binus University A (Rivera Kathrin & Marchella Febriyanti) failed to withstand the wave from overseas.

Three out of four teams in the final will be Malaysian. Asian powerhouse International Islamic University Malaysia claims two spots through #1 IIUM A (Ameera Moore & Mubarrat Wassey) and #4 IIUM B (Amshar Aziz & Mahherrajan Narayanan). The other Malaysian finalist is #6 Curtin University Sarawak (Keeshaanan Sundaresan & Vigneswaran Duraragh). #2 National University of Singapore (Andre Kua & Raymund Vitorio) is the odd one among the last four.

While there was a spike in participation and quality from abroad, the best teams in Indonesia chose to overlook AEO 2014. Universitas Indonesia and Institut Teknologi Bandung did not field their top debaters while Universitas Gadjah Mada decided to skip the competition altogether. The chances to receive feedback from international judges and clash with top Asian teams seemed to be insufficient to attract the strongest Indonesian debaters this year.

In the novice category, the final will have two non-Indonesian teams from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Sekolah Tun Fatimah, a Malaysian high school. The two other novice finalists come from Universitas Indonesia B and Politeknik Negeri Sriwijaya.