Shuffled 2025-01

This is a busy period for changes in the US political landscape, but those are painsgivingly detailed in many, many other places, so the focus here will be on the rest of the world, where things tend to be a little slower at this time of year. There tend not to be many elections over this period, or major cabinet reshuffles, but some positions are automatically scheduled for change at year-end, and it's also a convenient point for people to retire or make other personal changes. So, what’s been happening during the first week of 2025?

• 🇦🇹 Austria: Andrea Eder-Gitschthaler takes over from Franz Huber to serve a second stint as President of the Federal Council. Every six months this position rotates from state to state in alphabetical order, and so moves from Upper Austria to Salzberg this time. (That makes more sense in German!)

• 🇧🇷 Brazil: January 1st see lots of new Mayors take office, and a bunch of these were previously Federal Deputies. To replace those, 7 new full members, and 2 new alternates entered the chamber.

• 🇨🇱 Chile:

  • The government has been trying to purchase Salvador Allende's former house, but this was ruled unconstitutional as it's part-owned by a member of the government — his granddaughter Maya Fernández, the current Minister of Defence. As a result, Minister of National Assets Marcela Sandoval has been asked to resign, and the Undersecretary, Sebastián Vergara, is taking over in an acting capacity.

  • Meanwhile, the Chamber of Deputies seat held by Mercedes Bulnes until her death in November has passed to her husband, Roberto Celedón.

• 🇩🇪 Germany:

  • With Takis Mehmet Ali leaving the Bundestag to run the social affairs department of the LWL, Lucia Schanbacher has now taken his place.

  • Baden-Württemberg: Green Member of the State Parliament, Andrea Bogner-Unden, finally retired at the end of the year to drive her camper van around Europe, and has now been replaced by anti-gambling activist, and NLP coach, Christoph Höh.

  • Hamburg: In December, the State Parliament voted to expel one of its members, for the first time since 1945. Olga Petersen (AfD, until they kicked her out of the faction for leaning a bit too Putin-wards) hasn’t shown up at Parliament in months, largely it seems because she has actually fled to Russia. Claus Schülke is now replacing her.

  • Schleswig-Holstein: The Parliamentary Group leader of SSW, Lars Harms, retires from politics. Michael Schunck is his replacement.

• 🇬🇭 Ghana:

  • John Mahama returned this week for his third stint as President, after an eight-year gap. The widely-mocked statue outgoing President Nana Akufo-Addo erected of himself at the end of last year has already bitten the dust.

  • On the Parliamentary side, the new legislative term also began. There's one additional constituency this time around, but there's also still an outstanding dispute working its way through the courts, so there are currently still 275 MPs. Unlike the previous election, where the two main parties won the same number of seats, there was a massive swing this year to give the NDC an almost 100 seat majority. It's tricky to figure out whether some of those are same as previous MPs with similar names, but there seem to be over 120 new entrants—including a wave of showbiz stars.

• 🇮🇳 India: Rajendra Arlekar and Arif Mohammad Khan have engaged in a 2500km house-swap of their governors' mansions, switching between Bihar and Kerala. Meanwhile Kambhampati Hari Babu has been moved from Mizoram to Odisha, and Ajay Bhalla has taken over in Manipur.

• 🇮🇱 Israel - Afef Abed becomes the only Druze member of the governing coalition in the Knesset, taking over the seat vacated when former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant resigned.

• 🇮🇹 Italy: Andrea Orlando has decided that he'd rather be a member of the Liguria Regional Council than the national Parliament, and so has been replaced by Alberto Pandolfo.

• 🇲🇼 Malawi: Last June, the plane taking Vice President Saulos Chilima and former First Lady Patricia Shanil Muluzi to a funeral crashed, killing all on board. The resulting investigation and inquiry noted significant structural failures, and this week President Chakwera announced sweeping cabinet changes to try to address these, including Monica Chang'anamuno as the new Minister of Defence and Ezekiel Ching'oma new new Minister of Homeland Security.

• 🇲🇽 Mexico: The Secretariat of Public Function is no more as of year end, but that doesn't mean that Secretary Raquel Buenrostro Sánchez is out of a job. Instead she is now the head of the freshly created Anti-Corruption and Good Governance Secretariat. 🍅,🍅.

• 🇳🇴 Norway: at the start of September, Tore O. Sandvik became acting Minister of Climate and Environment, while Andreas Bjelland Eriksen took parental leave. This week Eriksen took over the Ministry again. Sources are unclear as to whether Sandvik has returned to a more junior position.

• 🇵🇪 Peru: Janet Tello has become the new President of the Supreme Court: only the second woman to ever hold this position.

• 🇼🇸 Samoa: Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Efi — head of one of the country's two royal families, and who has previously been both the O le Ao o le Malo (President) and the Prime Minister — has returned to the Council of Deputies after a 20+ year gap, swearing his oath on the same day as two other new members: Tiatia Mapesone Mapusua, and Malietoa Moli II Malietoa (son of former O le Ao o le Malo Malietoa Tanumafili II).

• 🇨🇭 Switzerland: On the first day of January every year like, er, clockwork, the Swiss presidency rotates to the next member of the Federal Council. As is customary, last year's Vice President Karin Keller-Sutter was approved by Parliament to take over, with Guy Parmelin becoming the new Vice President.

Next week… Afghanistan, Austria, Azerbaijan, Brunei, Chile, Czechia, Fiji, Flanders, Italy, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Malaysia, New Caledonia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sweden, Venezuela, and more. Subscribe to get the full list every week.