a tampered cricket ball & the principles of justice

"The first principle of a good government is certainly a distribution of its powers into executive, judiciary, and legislative, and a subdivision of the latter into two or three branches." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1787.

There is a good reason why the founding fathers of almost all modern nation states enshrined into the constitutions of their respective constitutions the idea of an independent Judiciary, that was distinct and separate from the executive and the legislature. One of the most important reasons behind this was to protect the minorites from getting trampled under a majority juggernaut. Unlike the legislature, the judiciary would not decide matters by a vote but on evidence, motives and witness disposals. In Darrell Hair's case, this basic maxim of modern democracies has been brutally violated. Hair has been condemned and ejected from the system for no good reason. There is no evidence against Hair - whatever there is, is only circumstantial. For the courts that would not have been good enough but it was enough for the International Cricket Committee because a majority of its members voted against Hair. Poor Hair has been sentenced by the legislature !!

Besides subversion of justice, this is also a classic case of reverse-racism. A highly-placed ICC source told AFP that India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, together with South Africa, Zimbabwe and West Indies voted for Hair's dismissal at the executive board meeting of the ICC in Mumbai on Friday. ( source: www.cricinfo.com ) Can it get more apparent - that this is a clear case of black vs white.

I am no fan of Hair's but this is not the way I wished to see him go. The reason could have been better and it should have happened long ago.