WSDC 2014: Draw's Out, Indonesia Meets 5 Familiar Rivals

The draw for the 2014 World Schools Debating Championships in Bangkok for Team Indonesia looks quiet similar to last year's. They will face Wales, Romania, United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Greece again. Indonesia lost to the first three and defeated the last two in WSDC 2013. The other opponents will be Canada, Sweden and Estonia. Indonesia has never lost to Sweden and Estonia before in WSDC.

All WSDC teams must debate 8 different teams in the preliminary stage, supposedly one from each of the 8 rank-based groupings. However, this year Indonesia received an unlucky draw that has led the team to meet 2 B class countries and none from the H class. Indonesia is in the E grouping (#25-30) and ranks #28 out of 46 contestants. The WSDC groupings are calculated based on victories and judge votes in the past 3 championships. Canada is from group A. So, it is the highest ranked team Indonesia will face in the mandatory rounds. Four preliminaries have prepared motions and the other four rounds are impromptu. Winning less than 5 prelims guarantees seats in the audience during the knockouts.

Since its WSDC entry in 2001, Indonesia has broken twice into the octofinals in 2003 and 2004, both with 5 wins. The highest achievement is #11 in 2003 but the team which collected the most judge votes was the one that went to WSDC 2010 in Qatar. Unfortunately, the latter did not break although they also collected 5 wins. Only the top 16 teams can break into the knockouts. Last year, Team Indonesia won the best English-as-Foreign-Language team award ended at #22 after having a 4-4 record.

The members of Team Indonesia 2014 are Alif Azadi (SMA Modal Bangsa Aceh), Kevin Bonaparte (SMA 17 Makassar), Marsa Harisa (SMA 9 Yogyakarta), Regina Cara Riantoputra (SMA 2 Tangerang Selatan) and John Amadeo (Raffles International Christian School Jakarta). There is no returning member in this team, one aspect that will be common in other contingents. The coaches are Subarkah Syafrudin and Riza Aryani, former Universitas Indonesia debaters who won the English-as-Second-Language category of the 2011 Australasian Intervarsity Debating Championships.

The draw, speaking positions and motions for Team Indonesia 2014's debates are as follows:
R0 Prop vs United Arab Emirates  (#9/B) - Impromptu

R1 Opp vs Canada (#6/A) - THBT post-revolution states should delegate trials of former rulers and high-ranking officials to the International Criminal Court
R3 Prop vs Sweden (#40/G) - THW allow prisoners to volunteer for drug trials in exchange for lighter sentences

R4 Opp vs Greece (#10/B) - Impromptu
R5 Opp vs Romania (#34/F) - THBT slum tourism does more harm than good

R6 Prop vs Wales (#16/C) - Impromptu
R7 Prop vs Estonia (#20/D) - THW lift tax exemptions from religious institutions that refuse to recognize marriage equality

R8 Opp vs Turkey (#27/E) - Impromptu