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Anna Regina Secondary shines at JOF Haynes finals
The Anna Regina team members collect their rewards from a Metro Representative
With much drama and flare the finals in the JOF Haynes Memorial Inter-Secondary School debating competition concluded with the opposing Anna Regina convincing the judges that ‘Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) is not the most significant contribution towards combating Global Warming.’
In fact, Alyssa Alphonso, as first speaker of the opposing Region Two team, sought to emphasise with facts and assumptions that while the LCDS is of importance to climate change it is more focused on boosting the local economy.
She said that while LCDS will contribute towards addressing climate change it is not significant, since the main aim of the move is to “get countries to pay us”.
“It can aid Guyana’s economic condition,” asserted a confident Alphonso. Her second speaker, Erica Singh, and third speaker Heamant Narine, who was adjudged the best speaker, both expressed similar convictions in their quest to persuade both the audience and judges of their opposing view.
They highlighted with much certainty that since Guyana’s forests represents a mere two percent of the world’s forests, saving the local forest would be of no significance if the rest of the world continues to practice pollution.
Hence Guyana’s LCDS would be nothing more than a ‘drop in the ocean’, the opposition passionately proclaimed.
But though they tried with varying theories to support the moot ‘Guyana Low Carbon Development Strategy is the most significant contribution towards combating Global Warming’ Wisburg Secondary of Region 10 could not outdebate its counterpart.
Despite the efforts of first speaker, Athena Little, to liken President Bharrat Jagdeo’s LCDS to a doctor with a cure for a deadly illness, her presentation was apparently not enough to convince the judges. Proposing second speaker, Saskia Warde and third speaker Tiffany Thom both did their part in earnest.
At the end of the rebuttal, a segment in which both schools lost marks, Anna Regina was declared the winner by Chief Judge Lurine Meertins with 273 marks. Wisburg Secondary scored 260. According to Meertins, both schools lost marks because they dared to add new material in their rebuttal, which is forbidden in any debating competition.
The other supporting judges were Ms Cecilia Holder and Ms Bibi Ali.
As winner of the competition Anna Regina Secondary was awarded a computer, compliments of Metro Office Supplies, among other tokens.
The debating competition which is a Ministry of Education annual activity commenced last May and saw the involvement of students from as far as Paramakatoi and Charity to the Corentyne and Linden.
The competition is intended to celebrate the oratorical expertise of the late Joseph Oscar Fitzclarence Haynes, who in his day was identified as the most brilliant and eminent lawyer of his generation. Born July 18, 1912, Haynes attended Mission Chapel Congregational School, and the Central Wesleyan School of New Amsterdam where at the age of 14 he successfully wrote the Pupil Teachers’ Examination. At the age of 20, he obtained a First Class Teachers’ Certificate and also passed the London Marticulation Examination. Haynes was appointed a teacher at the Scots School in New Amsterdam and later the Headmaster of Mara Primary School, Berbice River.
JOF Haynes by corresponding through London University read for his Bachelor of Arts and the LL.B degrees. After his successes, he resigned his position in the Ministry of Education to pursue what was to be his life long career – Law.
Haynes spent much of his time ensuring that the right word was always used in the right place and in excising whatever grammatical or orthographic scars there may unwittingly have been to flaw his work. It was for this very reason that the Ministry has continued to use Haynes as a model and as the Patron for the Debating Competition.
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