KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 24 — In an embarrassing blunder, artist Yuna was forced to give up the top award given to her by the local music industry because of a technicality despite garnering judges’ highest score.

The Recording Industry Association of Malaysia (RIM) has since reassigned Anuar Zain as the winner of the song of the year category.

Initially US-based Yuna’s “Penakut” was announced as the winning entry at RIM’s Anugerah Industri Muzik (AIM) 18 on November 12.

“'Penakut' by Yuna was erroneously determined to be the winner of the Song of the Year category based on the highest score awarded by judges to the 20 songs comprising the top five nominees for the sub-category awards for Best Pop Song, Best Rock Song, Best Ethnic Pop Song and Best Nasyid Song,” AIM-18 Organising Committee Co-chairman Rosmin Hashim told reporters at Hotel Maya here.

However, he said the winner must be from one of the four sub-category award winners — which “Penakut” was not. RIM set the selection criteria.

 “We have to refer back to the criteria,” he said when asked if it was necessary to revoke the award, instead of giving the rightful winner an additional award.

He said the error was due to a misinterpretation of the awards criteria by Ernst & Young, the appointed external auditors for the AIM-18 judging process.

Rosmin explained that there are different set of judges for each category.

For the song of the year category, although only winners from the four sub-categories are eligible, the judges for the main category were not told which four songs had already won the sub-categories.

When asked why it had taken almost two weeks to rectify the problem, Rosmin said they had looked into the matter the night after the awards ceremony and had to check with academy and the auditor.

RIM will be organising an open forum on December 6 at the Royale Chulan KL Hotel for feedback and comments to improve AIM.