THS believes in a mandate retirement age at 70. Good evening to the adjudicators and the house at large. Our burden of proof is as follows: A mandatory retirement age is beneficial for the individual and the country as a whole. Definitions: 1) Retirement age = is the age at most people stop working in a formal capacity. This varies in countries from 60 – 70 and above, it differs for men and women. 2) Member of Parliament = a person formally elected to the national legislative body, through an election. Our Case split is as follows: 1) today as first speaker I will be talking to you about the following Good governance points: Opportunity 2) my second speaker will be talking about the following points 1) Lack of initiative and 2) excessive pressure put on older MP’s. Today I am going to start my speech by contextualising for you. You are a young man/woman that has grown up in a country that has suffered from corruption and poor leadership, when you were younger, a mere child you did not notice the things happening around you. You didn’t notice the faults and flaws of your country or the leader at the time. But as you got older and became less naïve and more educated you realised that things were indeed very wrong and you realised that there needs to be a change in the way things are being run in your country. You want to be the person that helps make to make a change and the person that gets your country out of its malnourished state. So you make that your goal and you work hard at school and study politics at university and you put in the work hoping to get a satisfactory result. You work hard enough to get accepted into a good political party. You come in with your fresh ideas and honourable ways to help the country, but your ideas get shut down by the other members of the party and they get away with it because “they know what is best for the country because they’ve been here longer” and all your practical ideas, and your passion just gets cast aside. My first point is good governance. Leaders will have too much power for too long and can become corrupt. And so a mandatory retirement age is simply good governance. A number of African countries have had the same leader for generations (in fact Africa has a legacy of “leaders for life” and most have been in power far longer than they were supposed to) Paul Biya of Cameroon is the longest serving leader in the world. His 42 years are marked with fraud and human rights abuse. Robert Mugabe served for 37 years, his highly educated, wily politician became the caricature of an African dictator, who destroyed an entire country in order to keep his job. Mugabe damaged his country so badly that the country’s own government had to intervene and force him to step down. These long term leaders surrounded themselves with MP’s they know will support them. They have seen a democratic back slide which is a decrease in a country’s economy and create much instability. This in not only in African countries, it happens in countries around the world as well. For example the president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev after 33 years of power he simply changed the constitution so he can be re-elected as often as he wants. If there is a mandatory retirement age they will have to step down and not be allowed to declare. My second point is opportunity. What I mean when I say opportunity is that if there is a mandatory retirement age, when the members of parliament reach their retirement age, they are going to leave and new MP’s will be put in their place. Therefore it creates and opens positions for the younger workers in the political party. And it is fitting that younger members take their places because younger people are more passionate about their ideas and actually want to make a change and they are often more in tune with what people want. They would actually have a chance to act upon their ideas and put their plans and ideas into action since they now have the voice and authority to do so. The younger members are more invested in a good future than the older members because it is their future and they would obviously put more care and effort into their work. Another advantage of having younger members as MP’s is that they have grown up with the previous older leaders in power and they’ve seen their past mistakes and they have been one of the citizens that have suffered because of the previous leaders or members’ past decisions. For example if a member of parliament does bad actions or decisions it could affect the country. Younger members would be more open minded to new ideas and strategies, whereas older MP’s could have stagnated and become stale in finding new ways for the country to thrive, so younger members wouldn’t be so hesitant or sceptical about new ideas. It is also better to have younger people because of the fact that they have young, fresh, faster and active minds and adapt easier to change whereas the older members may not be as mentally pliable as before. Some may experience cognitive impairments such as deterioration of the brain and Alzheimer’s. So it would be better to have younger minds aiding the country and making vital decisions concerning the country. For all the above reasons the motion should do nothing but STAND.
