Parliament won’t affect my role as a human rights lawyer - Lawyer Sosu to Madina constituents

The newly elected Member of Parliament (MP) for the Madina constituency Lawyer Sosu Xavier, has assured his constituents that his new role will not interfere with his work as a human rights lawyer. Rather these two roles will work hand in hand for the development of the constituency.

Speaking to Raymond Nyamador on the Happy Morning Show, he shared that many people were worried that his political life will affect the human rights work he does for his constituents.

However, he notes: “As I go to parliament, I can achieve more than as an individual by pushing some laws in parliament. The political life will strengthen the help that I always give to the people. Because now if I go to court as a human rights lawyer , I am not going there only as a human rights lawyer but also as a state person who has been selected as a parliamentarian representing the people. It adds more to the work. Also in parliament, those values that I talk about will strengthen my parliamentary work”.

Illustrating his point, he narrates: “There was this guy called Eric Asante, a teacher, who was jailed for fifteen years for a crime he did not commit. I stood in for this man at the Supreme Court and he was acquitted and discharged but when we asked for compensation, he was only awarded 40,000 Ghana Cedis. For someone who has been in jail for 15 years without trial, should not the money be more than 40,000? At the end of the day, that 40,000 only goes to show that you are perpetrating injustice on the people. Why is this so? It is so because we don’t have any regulations that shows that any day you spend in prison in an unlawful custody is equal to some amount of money.

In other jurisdictions they have such system be it a dollar or two dollars. So if the police put you in an unlawful custody we know every day the country is in debt and with that measure if you have a law dealing with those things the law can prescribe that any police that is responsible for unlawful detention will be surcharged probably from your salary or your benefit and that will make everyone careful. But these laws are not in place so I believe that with the experiences I have had in human rights, I will use that to strengthen the parliamentary work”.

In the 2020 parliamentary elections, Francis Xavier polled 62,127 votes out of the 110,403 total votes cast to beat the incumbent MP Boniface Saddique who only secured 46,785 votes.