KOTA KINABALU: Desah, a civil society group formed to promote straight fights in the coming 13th General Election, announced that the inter-party debate for P170 Tuaran will be held at 7.30pm on May 21 at the Tamparuli Recreation Club.
The debaters are Pajudin Nordin of Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) and Edward Linggu of State Reform Party (Star).
Moderator of the debate is Dr Arnold Puyok of UiTM while the title of debate, “Is a state or national party the solution to problems in Sabah”.
Entrance is by ticket only and tickets are available at the door.
The Sepanggar debate, however, has to be cancelled for the time being due to lack of response from the local debaters.
“This is the second debate between opposition parties sponsored by Desah to help facilitate one-to-one contests in the coming 13th General Election. We welcome and encourage voters from Tuaran to turn out in numbers and take advantage of the debate to judge for themselves which party would provide the best candidate to face off with the ruling party for P170 Tuaran,” organizing chairman Ronnie Klassen said.
“We have invited all other political parties, for example SAPP and DAP, to join in the debate so that the voters can see for themselves which party can offer the best choice for them. So watch out if additional debaters may turn up at last minutes!” he said.
“We are advocating a debating culture for the Sabah elections, which is in line with democratic practice all over the world. Open debates allow credible, convincing candidates to be identified, especially compared to the closed-door candidate selection process practised by most political parties from ruling or opposition parties, in this country.
“Closed door candidate selection among the opposition parties has failed in the last two general elections to produce a one-to-one contest which is essential to allow candidates with majority support to win. In multi-cornered fights, a candidate can win by just winning the most votes among all the candidates which may not exceed majority votes. This is a known weakness in the first past-the-post system adopted in Malaysian elections. Many countries use a second round polling to enable the top two candidates from the first round to face off with each other to produce a winner with majority support. This was used most recently in the French presidential election,” Ronnie added.