Namibia formation Bill using the African Union’s Model Law on Access to Information as the basis. However, since that time, the draft bill languished in the halls of state and by end 2017 it was unclear whether or when the bill would make an appearance on the parliamentary agenda. Good governance and freedom of expression cannot be fully realised without access to information. This is a fact that government itself has acknowledged. In 1998 government committed itself to passing, what was then called, a Freedom of Information Act. But 20 years later an Access to Information (ATI) BILL is still not part of the legislative framework of the country. In his 2017 budget speech, the Minister of Information, Communication and Technology, Tjekero Tweya, assured the public that the ATI Bill, along with the reviewed National Information Policy “will see the light of the day before the end of 2017/18 Financial Year.” This did not happen. Cabinet referred the draft bill, formulated through the multistakeholder process, back to the MICT, because it was of the opinion that the bill lacked input by government security agencies. The MICT was thus compelled back to the drawing board to hold consultative meetings with the various agencies in government that deal with national security such as the Ministry of Safety and Security, which included the Namibian Police, as well as the Central Intelligence Service. Tweya announced that he would table the Electronic Transactions and Cybercrime (ETC) Bill in Parliament in February, but it was withdrawn shortly thereafter. The second draft was not a hugely improved version of the first, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), as it still contained provi- sions that would allow for the violation of privacy and contained language that could easily be used to repress freedom of expression on the internet. The ICT ministry was at the time incorporating the input by the public and stakeholders. It was unclear when in 2018 the bill would be tabled. The Data Protection Bill was also placed on the backburner until the ETC Bill was finalised. One of the recommendations being considered by the Ministry is for data protection to be a policy that supports the ETC Bill. The Broadband Policy suffered the same fate as that of the ETC Bill. The lack of public and stakeholder consultation resulted in a draft policy that, as described by the ACTION Coalition and IPPR, “comes across more as a statement of intent rather than an actual policy statement”. The main critique was that the implementation provisions lacked adequate timeframes, priorities and that specific actions were poorly articulated. They also criticised the lack of consultation that preceded the drafting of the policy. The MICT withdrew the policy and conducted two public consultative meetings, and invited written input. As with the ETC Bill, it was expected to be formalised in 2018. After intense lobbying by civil society, government removed the problematic Section 52 from the Whistleblower Protection Bill. The clause stated that a whistleblower’s protection could be withdrawn if they were critical of government policy when making a disclosure. The Witness Protection Act and the Whistleblower Protection Act were then subsequently passed by Parliament. So This is Democracy? 2017 83