Two Student Delegation Teams from the Faculty of Law, Universitas Brawijaya (FH UB) won two awards in the Debate Competition at the Legislative Summit Festival (LSF) which was held online by the Student Representative Council of the Faculty of Administrative Sciences, Universitas Brawijaya (DPM FIA UB) on Wednesday (28/08/2024). The two winning teams are Oke Team, consisting of Azhar Sirroth Mustaqim (2023), Revalina Aspriliantiara (2023), and Keisha Aurellia (2023) who won 1st place. Then there is Burung Elang Team consisting of Verdian Pratam Putra (2022), Alvin Tirta Dinata (2023), Nayyara Parsa Saniya (2024) who won 2nd place.
Azhar Sirroth as the representative of Oke Team said that this is a unique competition because the motions presented are impromptu, which means that participants do not prepare or make written scripts in advance and appear suddenly.
“That in the course of the motion itself we will be given three themes, the first is education, the second is employment, and the third is freedom of speech. Which before we run the debate session, we first select the video. This is also one of the advantages of our team, that when the LSF we brought a motion about tapera and the position was right, we disagree with tapera,” explained Azhar.
Alvin as the representative of Burung Elang Team added that their group brought the topic of the relevance of the independent curriculum.
“For our team itself, we brought many ideas, one of which was related to education where we discussed the relevance of the independent curriculum which has been widely discussed lately. The reason we took this topic was because we thought that with the existence of this independent curriculum, it would be difficult to provide certainty for students in Indonesia,” said Alvin.
The Oke Team as the first winner in the LSF itself spoke about freedom of speech and the Press Bill (Draft Law).
“That the Press Bill is considered to be curtailing freedom itself. At that time our position was pro and indeed agreed that the Press Law with the existence of the press committee seemed as if it was not as free as before, they became a supervisory institution which was a gagging institution that cut things up a little bit,” added Azhar.
Oke Team based its argument on the fundamental question of how Indonesia can achieve democratic freedom if the press is under government control. This is very crucial because in the development of the trias politica theory, it is stated that the press is one of the strongest pillars in supporting democracy. As the fourth pillar, the press has an important role in maintaining the balance of power between the executive, legislative, and judiciary. However, when the press is not independent and is trapped in government control, the function of supervision and free delivery of information to the public can be disrupted, and this threatens the principles of healthy democracy.
In the preparation and implementation process, of course, both Teams experienced obstacles. “The debate system brought by LSF this year is really different from the usual competition, such as the impromptu motion, and so on. So, at first we were surprised to see the system, but after the first match, thank God we were able to adjust,” said Alvin.
The Legislative Summit Festival is a competition consisting of several competition branches, one of which is a debate related to legislation for young people in Indonesia which takes broader sub-topics such as education, employment, and freedom of speech. The participants themselves are all UB students. (dilla/UB PR/ Trans. Iir)
