It hap­pens af­ter every cer­e­mo­ny in which na­tion­al awards are giv­en to cit­i­zens deemed to be de­serv­ing of such ho­n­ours. Shouts and claims of favouritism and po­lit­i­cal self-serv­ing fill the news me­dia. The con­tro­ver­sies and “bad-mouthing” of whichev­er gov­ern­ment grants the awards al­so fill the space when “silk”, se­nior coun­sel sta­tus, is giv­en to prac­ti­tion­ers at the Bar.

It could have been ex­pect­ed, there­fore, that the same would be re­peat­ed af­ter this year’s Re­pub­lic Day awards to a num­ber of ser­vants of the State and peo­ple de­clared de­serv­ing. Not on­ly are crit­i­cisms di­rect­ed at in­di­vid­u­als and the com­mit­tee which grants the awards, but con­cerns are ex­pressed about the high num­ber of re­cip­i­ents. The ex­ag­ger­at­ed fear is that soon enough, the per­cent­age of per­sons hold­ing na­tion­al awards of one kind or the oth­er will be in­or­di­nate­ly high in re­la­tion to the re­al­i­ty of a pop­u­la­tion of on­ly 1.4 mil­lion.

This crit­i­cism is based on the fact that high na­tion­al awards should tru­ly be earned by a se­lect few who have dis­tin­guished them­selves in ser­vice to their coun­try and fel­low cit­i­zens. Two points here. The need is to take a sec­ond look at the cat­e­gories which have been iden­ti­fied as ar­eas tru­ly de­serv­ing of na­tion­al ho­n­ours: are those ar­eas of na­tion­al life and per­for­mance suf­fi­cient­ly in need of spe­cial ho­n­our, and are there rig­or­ous cri­te­ria es­tab­lished and ful­ly utilised in de­ter­min­ing the de­serv­ing?

The out­stand­ing is­sue in the se­lec­tion of awardees though, is the con­nec­tion, re­al or per­ceived, be­tween awardees and the po­lit­i­cal par­ty and gov­ern­ment in of­fice. It will help the cause of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to be cer­tain that those cho­sen for the awards are de­serv­ing, if a clin­i­cal study is done on the awards sys­tem and those who have been award­ed over the decades. The ma­jor is­sue to be probed by the sur­vey is the po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tion be­tween the awardee, gov­ern­ment and par­ty in pow­er and the weight of the con­tri­bu­tion of the in­di­vid­u­als and groups.

The stream of con­tentions has con­sis­tent­ly arisen ex­cept, pos­si­bly, dur­ing the first decade or so of the grant­i­ng of the awards; maybe the se­lec­tions were more in keep­ing with what was deemed as qual­i­ty per­for­mances by in­di­vid­u­als.

Un­doubt­ed­ly, the con­tentions be­come so in the po­lit­i­cal­ly-charged re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two ma­jor par­ties and the heat­ed race re­la­tions sur­round­ing elec­toral pol­i­tics fought out on the ba­sis of naked racial an­tag­o­nisms and turf.

As has be­come the cus­tom in such mat­ters, vi­able so­lu­tions put for­ward by in­di­vid­u­als, re­gion­al group­ings, Con­sti­tu­tion com­mis­sions, com­mit­tees et al, have been stead­fast­ly ig­nored by whichev­er gov­ern­ment is in pow­er at the point of the flam­ing con­tro­ver­sy.

It is as if suc­ceed­ing gov­ern­ments of the two ma­jor par­ties are tone deaf and com­plete­ly un­mind­ful of sug­ges­tions as to how gov­er­nance of the State in this post-In­de­pen­dence pe­ri­od in the life of the na­tion can be im­proved. The log­i­cal rec­om­men­da­tion that has been ad­vanced is to un­tie the grant­i­ng of awards from the gov­ern­ment in of­fice and hand the pow­er over to an in­de­pen­dent na­tion­al com­mit­tee. How­ev­er, par­ties and gov­ern­ments will nev­er hand over a po­lit­i­cal ad­van­tage; un­less forced to.