Closing debate ends event On a high

(From left) Jo Tan' Crispin Rodrigues, Melizarani T. Selva and Hafidz Rahman at the closing debate of Singapore Writers Festival at Victoria Theatre on Nov 17. ST PHOTO: DESMOND WEE

- Clement Yong

Plastic is love, plastic is patriotic and, most of all, plastic is Indian.

An effervescent proposition team for the motion This House Believes That Life In Plastic Is Fantastic successfully convinced a packed Victoria Theatre of these "truths" at the raucous Singapore Writers Festival (SWF) debate on Nov 17.

The quartet that formed Team Plastic turned the crowd against the environmental cause with ease, once more proving that no earnest citation of fact will ever prevail against sophistry. Arts educator Hafidz Rahman, not averse to old-fashioned pork barrel politics, flung free plastic bags into the crowd to rile them up.

To the opponent's statistics on single-use plastics, playwright Io Tan engaged in primordial ethnic rhetoric - "With Asians, it's never single use". She then demonstrated why plastic continues to be the preferred medium of packaging for aid delivery by dropping her bottle from a height.