Competency is usually rewarded, and rewards are pretty well correlated with competency.
There's plenty of room in the tails one can cite to justifyany opinion on the matter, but on average I think we're far more meritocratic than not.
Are there examples of societies who have done meritocracy better, from which we can take ideas to improve our own system?
Hiring people of all backgrounds that agree with a forced marxist outcome (diversity), firing people dissenting to Marxist forced outcome or shutting them up (inclusion), and a forced marxist outcome (equity) never lead to meritocracy in other places. Why would it here?
Likewise, affirmative action in hiring and research grants favor a less productive woman or a less competent person with the right identity category. Affirmative action categories are from the 60s when the US had a very different demographic, and whom held high status office jobs looked very different.
Meritocracy is about how government employees (or those who aren't legally "employees" per se, but who still have the political power) are chosen, not about how students or private employees are chosen. (c.f. how the existence of religious schools doesn't imply the country is a theocracy, the existence of CEOs doesn't imply the country is an autocracy, etc.)
A metric of diversity being applied to selection really doesn't mean it's the sole criterion. The effect isn't negligible, but neither is it fully-like wannabe egalitarian marxist systems where your parent's job or political affiliations forever determined your future status without negotiation.
There's definitely a scale between a meritocratic and egalitarian society.
Saudi Arabia does not seem to be rewarding scientists or inventors and doesn't consequently get any significant scientific results at home, even though the country is obscenely rich.
