This story dates back to July, but it’s worth repeating.

Apparently, the president of Madagascar, Marc Ravalomanana, who is also apparently very superstitious, expelled the French ambassador, Gildas Le Lidec, after only six months into his posting, because he feared that Ambassador Le Lidec was the source of bad luck.

Ambassador Le Lidec was posted in the Democratic Republic of Congo in October 2000 when President Laurent-Désiré Kabila was murdered, and he was posted in Cote d’Ivoire from 2002 to 2005, during the rebellion against Laurent Gbagbo.

The story goes that President Ravalomanana believed that Ambassador Le Lidec had the evil eye. He persistently refused to meet him after his appointment in January 2008 and the ambassador left his post after only six months in office.

There are, of course, other interpretations of events, notably Madagascar’s desire to demonstrate its independence from France. Nonetheless, as these stories go, it’s quite an unusual one.