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Today parliamentarians made little progress in meeting civil society’s demands on the Secrecy Bill. The Right2Know campaign believes that, while the recently proposed two-month extension on the committee’s work shows that those behind the Bill are being put under pressure to revise their position, this deadline is still not realistic. In effect, with Parliamentary recess in July there will be only a month to meet until the committee’s new deadline.
Today MPs discussed the crucial point of establishing an independent body to review decisions to classify information in terms of the Bill. This is one of the Right2Know's seven demands of the proposed law. However, MPs made no progress on this basic oversight mechanism that would prevent abuses of power by officials with the responsibility to classify information as secret. Instead, MPs exchanged jokes and anecdotes and closed the meeting in less than two hours, only planning to meet again in a week.
This is in stark contrast to the heated atmosphere seen in the committee in recent weeks, when MPs were voting clause by clause to finalise the Bill. It is clear that the growing political and public pressure against the Bill has put the Bill's drivers on the backfoot, and the MPs’ reluctance to engage in serious discussion is suggestive of an attempt to buy time through "filibuster".
It is now clearer than ever that MPs on the committee are not fully in control of the Parliamentary process and are being guided by external forces.
The Right2Know campaign is mindful that those driving the Bill may attempt to appease critics through minor concessions, and the campaign will continue to raise mobilise public support for the demands made in R2K's 7 Point Freedom Test (listed below). By Friday morning, over 17500 people had joined the Right2Know campaign, in addition to over 400 civil society organisations, on the basis of these demands and the values they embody. In the coming months the Right2Know campaign will continue to use these demands to build a grassroots movement for open and accountable government.