MikeDjaps

Law⚖|Tech|Politics|Economics|Sports⚽️

[Kow Essuman @kaessuman]

We need to have a more honest, more progressive conversation as a society about legal vacations; because the truth is, many lawyers, young and old, are dying from what I call the silent killers.

Judges are not spared either. Diabetes. Hypertension. High cholesterol. Kidney failure. These are quietly claiming people in our profession, a profession that is relentless, high-stakes, and fast-paced by nature. It requires brakes, and it requires rest, or it will take a toll that shows up far too late.

Many lawyers also carry mental health struggles they never speak about, because of the stigma our society still attaches to it. We are trained to project strength. We are rarely taught how to rest.

I'll share something personal.

As a young practitioner, I was constantly on the road, travelling up and down the country for court. One day, after a court sitting in Accra, I went to see my doctor with a splitting headache. She looked at my blood pressure and was alarmed. She told me to take time off. I told her I couldn't; I had to be in court in Ho the next day.

She said I was going nowhere. She called my boss, Kojo Anan Ankomah and told him directly. Ace understood immediately. He sent me home for a week, then two. The cases proceeded without me. I rested, and I returned.

Years later, I was thrown into public service; an even more demanding environment. Working with President Akufo-Addo was no child's play. The diligence required was on another level entirely. Picture a young lawyer advising a constitutional lawyer of his stature - someone who had lived through the very history he was now asking me to analyse. That was the reality, every day, for eight years.

I took short vacations during that period. They were never enough. I've had to spend real, deliberate time, this year and last, working on myself, physically and mentally.

This is why, when these conversations about legal vacations come up, I believe we must approach them with a progressive mindset. Not as a luxury. Not as weakness. But as necessity.

Lawyers don't just carry legal problems. We carry the psychological burden of our clients too. That is precisely why we are called Counselors. We absorb their weight and add it to our own. That accumulation has a cost, and if we do not build in rest, the profession will keep quietly costing us our health, and sometimes our lives.

It was only this year that my doctor showed me my blood pressure reading from 2015. The one that had alarmed her all those years ago. I was alarmed at the figures. I thanked her, genuinely, for saving my life. Because without that intervention, I could easily have been standing in a courtroom in Ho, mid-argument, when something gave way.

Rest is not indulgence. It is survival. Let's talk about it that way.

[Victor @AtsuTamakloe]

You can't believe it because??

This is a CEO telling you that the 1m is about a third of his budget.
Is it that you guys think he has inflated their finances or what?
Or that the 1m shouldn't be that significant to him?

What's the issue here?

[Afia @af_ia_blue]

The people who were against conducting cases during legal vacation just last week want their application to be heard during the vacation and those who were totally for conducting cases during vacation are nowhere to be found.🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 are we all seeing how ridiculous politicizing everything is??

[Farmer John,MP @johndumelo]

I will invite you to my office one evening and see the queue. The voters will tell you they didn’t vote for you to just go and make laws and shout yeah yeah. They need their Hosp bills, kids fees and 6th child Outdooring money. Oh and as well as nokofio for some Kenkey for the evening…….i won’t call it stress cos that’s what I signed up for. 😁

[Dziedzorm Di Medici 🇬🇭🇨🇺 @geenaeus]

A drunk man's words are thoughts often formed in sobriety. We will be watching the foreign media space because you have already informed us that the NPP has contracted the foreign media to do a fake story to tarnish the image of GOLDBBOD. It is just a matter of time.

[Dr. Sey Kekessie @Akorasey]

Good on KSM for being one of the few to call out the buffoonery.

Good on him.

[𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗺 @Prosper_selorm]

Afenyo-Markin’s problem is the fact that he feels the political/ruling class should enjoy certain privileges that should shield them from corruption probes, etc.

This dangerous man believes the political class should not be subjected to the same rules and standards as the rest of us.

Afenyo-Markin is a classist who believes parliamentarians should have separate hospitals from the rest of us.

Afenyo-Markin believes politicians should protect each other, no matter the party they belong to.

Afenyo-Markin is the “scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back” type of politician.

People like him are a danger to all of us.

The quicker the NPP removes him from that Minority Leader role, the better for all of u

[#TV3GH @tv3_ghana]

Legal Vacation Debate: The feisty posture of senior lawyers like Godfred Dame and Atta Akyea is pathetic, and they are not worthy of emulation. - Austin Brako Powers, Private legal practitioner

#TV3NewDay #TV3GH

[Saadick Raji @_Rvji]

He speaks like a Minority Leader under pressure.

[Julius Kwame Anthony 𓃵 @fatheranthoni]

He has been consistent with those suggestions. That man is the single most dangerous human in Ghana. Left to him, we’d be a classist society with an overt elite consensus to oppress the rest of the population.

[Blaque Gatsby @blaquegatsby]

Afenyo is basically saying, " dont arrest our corrupt members so when we come back to power we wonr areaat your corrupt members".

They dont love Ghana.

[berko @my_berko]

He sounds daft.

[Lamp Oil @LampOil10]

If I were the one who had or knew someone who could empanel SC judges within 24hrs to aid my case… I would definitely lament over her dismissal as well

[MPK 𓃵 @MPKwarteng_]

At this stage, this man is on a political and (more simplistically), a personal vendetta spree. He’s not only toxic but appalling to the core. He is bitter and dangerous at the level of idiocy he advances as truth.

[Dziedzorm Di Medici 🇬🇭🇨🇺 @geenaeus]

After destroying her career for your parochial interest, you come here to cry wolf.

[KT @kojo_t_]

Congratulations to all incoming ESQs and those who successfully passed their part 1 exams!
You did it!! Well done!

Those who didn’t pass this year, worry not! The bar isn’t full yet. Your year is always the best year at the Bar.

❤️👏🏿

[Joseph Ackah-Blay @BlayAckah]

I genuinely do not envy older Ghanaians. Their view of the Ghanaian story must be frustrating.

I speak of those who have lived into their 90s. They would have been introduced to Ghanaian politics at a time when they could not appreciate why men of a different colour, forming a minority, held political power and determined the fate of a colony.

They would have been alive at the beginning of the great movement that took off at Saltpond and culminated at the Old Polo Grounds. Some may have joined the Verandah Boys. Others, a little later, may have encountered the ideological training at Winneba.

Then the colossus of an African took over.

Some may have started working at the Public Works Department, GNTC or UTC. Perhaps they worked at the Aboso Glass Factory. These were years of great determination and possibility.

Ghana was born in their lifetime.

It was a period of enormous hope; a distinctly African story of resilience, determination and self-belief. They would have repeated the famous refrain: “The Black Man is capable of managing his own affairs.”

Perhaps they were starting families, or had already started one. Life must have seemed full of promise.

But things would change.

They would change so dramatically that the leader of the new nation would eventually be branded a despot. Who could have imagined that, within barely 15 years of a take over, men carrying guns would claim to have formed a National Liberation Council to liberate Ghanaians from dictatorship?

There would be renewed hope.

A party pledging progress would take over. Power would no longer be concentrated in one man, so perhaps we would settle for two. Our friend would be among the masses who elected one, while an electoral college selected the other.

By now, our friend would be older. Wiser. Calmer. Not as optimistic as he had been in the early years, but still hopeful.

Three years later, he would have to dream again.

The uniformed men would once more claim that Ghana’s image was so badly damaged that it needed redemption. A council of redemption would be established to lead the charge.

Soon, our friend would be left appalled.

The Council itself would claim to be Supreme. When the first phase failed, a second phase would begin.

He would join the many frustrated Ghanaians demanding better. The uniformed men would blame politicians and partisan politics for the state of affairs, conveniently forgetting that they had been in charge for a considerable period. They would propose a Union Government, which would be accepted at the polls but ultimately rejected.

Before they could even attempt to make amends, arguably Ghana’s second most influential leader would emerge.

A young, skinny soldier would lead what he called a revolution.

For 112 days, his Revolutionary Council would embark on a cleansing exercise. The argument was simple: Ghana could not move forward without accountability.

Our friend would now be in his early forties.

He would hear university students chant, “Let the blood flow.”

For perhaps the first time, he would not know where to stand.

He had seen enough to begin giving up, but hope has a stubborn way of refusing to die.

Maybe, just maybe, this was the reset.

The young military leader preached painful retribution that the nation, he argued, had to endure to get itself back on course. Let us call it a reset; a quick surgical procedure that would eventually give way to constitutional democracy.

A People’s National Party would take over.

Before our friend could even make sense of the new order, the National Defence Council would take charge.

It was supposed to be Provisional.

Ironically, it would last eleven years.

Our friend would now be nearing retirement. He had lived through devastating hunger and periods of shortages of basic necessities. He had seen enough political upheaval, enough uncertainty and enough abuse.

He was tired.

More than anything, he simply wanted change.

[Kwadwo Sheldon @kwadwosheldon]

I visited the farm this morning.. my mind borst!!

[Kwaku Asante @kwakuasanteb]

How's this stupidity happening at the Police station? How do you arrest a suspect and allow all these people around him to the extent of assaulting him?

That man should be arrested immediately. What sort of nonsense is this.

[Elikplim Simon-Pomary @princeganaku]

Engage with the subject matter, offer a reasoned counter-argument, show why what you’ve read is wrong, flawed or even dumb. That’s how you engage respectfully.