The Students
PPM Section
The Prime Minister's Trophy, or Piala Perdana Menteri is the Holy Grail of Malaysian debate. It began in 1974, when an esteemed old boy, our second Prime Minister, Allahyarham Tun Abdul Razak suggested a tournament to produce dynamic leaders, intelligent and daring orators from the fully residential schools. The first tournament was held in the Malay College.
The Malay trophy, donated by Tun Razak, was designed by another old boy, Dato' Baharuddin Kassim. The College is rather succesfull in the Malay category. The College first won it in 1980-when the legendary debaters Saifuddin Abdullah (now Malaysian Youth Council President) and Suhaimi Sulaiman (yes, the famous newscaster)defeated the SDAR team. It was only 12 years later that the trophy returned to the royal town of Kuala Kangsar when we defeated Sekolah Alam Shah. The next year, we defeated SMSJ to retain the title.
This year, the glorious 1999, we did it again when Ahmad Azizi, Wan Mohd Izrin and Imran Idris defeated defending champions SEMESTI. Thus we have won more titles than any other team, except KISAS, who also have won four times. We have reached the finals for a record of 8 times.
The English trophy was donated by our present Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Unfortunately, we haven't been really sucessfull in the English category. We only won it once-in 1975, when, lead by the talented Azman Manaf @ Man Koboi, we defeated the Royal Military College. We have reached the finals a total of 7 times, the last being 1997. I've written an article to commemorate our latest success.
Speechless
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