Some Rare Good News For Haiti

Photo from AFP

While the focus on this last day of January 2011 is either turned towards Egypt or Florida joining Virginia in declaring The Affordable Care Act unconstitutional, Haiti once again never takes a backseat to the importance of its headlines. And today, it received some rather surprising and rarely awesome news.

Another former exiled President maybe allowed back into the country, and it is the good exiled former Pres instead of the awful one.

Haiti's government said Monday it was ready to issue a new passport to former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which would allow him to return after almost seven years in exile in South Africa.

"The government will give assurances that as soon as it receives such a request, it will be swiftly granted," the information ministry said in a statement.

Aristide, who fled the Caribbean country in 2004, formally requested earlier that Haitian authorities issue him a diplomatic passport, and provide guarantees for his safety.

"It is my understanding that the Council of Ministers has agreed to issue a diplomatic passport to president Aristide befitting his position as a former president of the republic," his lawyer Ira Kurzban told AFP.

As written before here and elsewhere, both the Clinton and Bush Administrations (especially the latter), played a part along with France in forcing the nation's first democratically elected to egress out of the land seven years ago.

And although the timing of giving the renowned expatriate a return should have been way sooner (or him not leaving the country at all), it certainly was a welcomed surprise to see this news come across the wire today.