Debating:
• 6th Best Speaker, Asian
British Parliamentary
Debating Championship
2017
• Macau Asian
Parliamentary Debating
Championship 2016,
Champion, Overall Best
Speaker, and Finals Best
Speaker
• Royals Intervarsity
Debating Championship
2017, Champion, Finals
Best Speaker
•
2 times Australasians
Intervarsity Debating
Championship ESL
Champion and ESL Finals
Best Speaker (2016 &
2017)
Individual
Awards/Appointments:
• LexisNexis Student
Ambassador 2017/18
• Peer Mentor, University of
Malaya Law Faculty
2017/18
It was through debates, that I learnt of soft and hard diplomacy, the
concept of gender and racial fluidity, how systemic discrimination against
minorities exist even in the most developed democracies, the plight of
communities longing for self-determination in West Papua, Kurdistan,
Kashmir, and Catalonia, philosophical questions on the boundaries
between humans and machine, the impacts of disruptive technology, and
to look beyond the myopic limitations of geography to analyse the
interconnected web of international relations and wide-ranging effects of
global conflicts such as unrest in the middle east and the battle between
Superpowers for global hegemony.
Establishing the University of Malaya Law Review
I’ve always enjoyed the art of writing; I believe that the act of penning
thought into words helps us better organize our thoughts and forces us to
verify the veracity of our claims. Before founding the Law Review, I’ve
penned a few articles which were published on various platforms and
received positive reviews. It was encouraging, but I also made an odd
observation. Malaysian law students are very opinionated and outspoken,
and have many valuable insights about the law, as can be seen from the
brilliant assignments and research papers produced as part of our
coursework. Why then, aside from a few articles scattered across
individual blogs and the occasional opinion column, is there no platform
specifically for us to express our views and aspirations for a better
Malaysia?
Luckily, the Dean of the law faculty, Associate Prof. Dr Johan Shamsuddin,
and a lecturer in the law faculty, Dr Sarah Tan, has been supportive of the
idea of a student journal for years. Determined, I put together an action
plan and a team of dedicated individuals, and nervously took my proposal
to the faculty, asking to be placed in charge of the project. They agreed,
and after weeks of discussion and fine-tuning, the University of Malaya
Law Review was established.
At its inception, I’ve always wanted the Law Review to be more than an
annual publication, and secured funding for a website and approval to
carry out other activities. Today, other than preparing for the publication
of the second edition of our annual academic journal, the Law Review,
through our website, www.umlawreview.com acts as an assignment bank,
where A graded assignments are stored, a publicity arm for the law faculty,
where we highlight faculty and individual achievements of our students,
and serve as a supplementary publication to the annual journal through
our Lex; in Breve section, where we publish articles about legal
developments in the country. Some of our more popular articles right now
are on topics such as analysis on amendments to the Bankruptcy Act,
Companies Act, an introduction to the Malaysian Legal System, and
reporting on events such as the ‘Lextech 2017: Future of Law’ conference.
Reception for the Law Review has been superb as well, web data shows
that we receive thousands of views monthly, and we sold three-quarters of
our annual journal within one month of publication. It was a great honour,
being given the opportunity to be a part of this important milestone for
the UM Law Faculty.