In just over a month, the 2011 Merdeka Award recipients will be announced.
The Award, the nation’s highest award for excellence, is given after an exhaustive and stringent process that begins about 6 months before the Award recipients are announced each August, reflecting the philosophy of the Merdeka Award, which strives to be independent, objective and above all, fair.
This year, the Merdeka Award Secretariat welcomed new committee members across all 5 categories, in keeping with the Bylaws of the Award, which state that committee members are appointed for a 3-year cycle. The previous committee members served the Merdeka Award for the period 2008-2010.
The committees began their task in March 2011, and recently completed the exercise to select the 2011 recipients. Their task was not an easy one.
As the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Merdeka Award, Dato’ Shamsul Azhar Abbas put it, “The Nomination and Selection Committees, along with the Board of Trustees of the Merdeka Award, all play a pivotal role in building and sustaining the reputation of the Award. Equally important, the nomination and selection process must focus on accomplishments, not personalities. While the Award recipients should be able to bring prestige and credibility to the Award, it must be their accomplishments that are given the greater prominence – over and above the laureates themselves.”
The committee members are made up of eminent individuals from Malaysia and abroad, bringing with them a wealth of knowledge, experience and expertise that allow them to seek nominations from among outstanding individuals and organisations who have distinguished themselves and laboured tirelessly, with great sincerity and conviction, for the good of this country and its people.
The committee members have deliberated, examined the merits and finer qualities of each individual or organisation’s nomination, and in the end, identified those who have stood, above and beyond the rest, in their embodiment of the Merdeka Spirit. Who they are will be made known to all Malaysians on August 22, 2011.
The 2011 Merdeka Award recipients will be announced on August 22, 2011. Watch out for details of the announcement in coming weeks.