Shuffled 2025.03

The slow end-of-year period is definitely over now, with the pace of changes ramping up significantly again this week. As always, here I’ll try my hardest to ignore that place that sucks up all the attention everywhere else, but as it has a habit of spilling over into other countries’ affairs, there’ll still be some echoes…

• 🇦🇬 Antigua and Barbuda: Last week we saw Rawdon Turner elected to Parliament. This week he slid straight into a newly-created Cabinet role as Minister of Social and Urban Transformation. The portfolio was carved out of a mix of other Ministries, but all other Ministers remained intact.

• 🇦🇺 Australia: Last year Bill Shorten, long-term leader of the Opposition, and current inaptronymic Minister for Government Services and the National Disability Insurance Scheme, announced he would be retiring from politics to become the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra. This week, the time for that retirement arrived, triggering a mini-reshuffle, with his two portfolio areas reassigned amongst existing ministers Amanda Rishworth, Katy Gallagher, and Anne Aly.

• 🇧🇩 Bangladesh: In December, AF Hassan Ariff, former Attorney General, and the cabinet-level Adviser for Land in the current interim government, died. This week Ali Imam Majumder, the Adviser for Food, was assigned this role as an additional duty.

• 🇧🇬 Bulgaria: after seven elections since 2021, and a run of failed coalitions, and caretaker / minority governments, Rosen Zhelyazkov has become the next Prime Minister, almost three months on from October's election. GERB party leader, and three-time former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, whose last government fell after anti-corruption protests, was a little too problematic for potential partners, so agreed to step aside. But even with that, the new Frankenstein coalition holds only 107 out of 240 seats, and is reliant on a confidence agreement with the APS to bring their additional nineteen. The government now has 30 days to agree amongst themselves what they're actually going to do.

• 🇨🇴 Colombia: Foreign Minister, and former ambassador to the US, Luis Gilberto Murillo has resigned, rumouredly eyeing a presidential run next year (the rules restrict people who have held various offices in the preceding 12 months from standing.) His successor won't take office until February 1st, so here's hoping there are no major international incidents during this time…

• 🇭🇷 Croatia: Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of Agriculture, Josip Dabro, was forced to resign after a video surfaced of him firing 15 shots from a semi-automatic pistol out the window of a moving car. State Secretary Tugomir Majdak will replace him for now.

• 🇬🇦 Gabon: General Brice Oligui Nguema has been Transitional President since the coup at the end of 2023. Elections for a new President are scheduled for later this year, but meanwhile Nguema has reshuffled and enlarged his cabinet, appointing, amongst others, a new Deputy Prime Minister, Alexandre Barrault-Chambrier, and a new Economy Minister, Marc Dumba.

• 🇮🇳 India: Back at the start of the year, we saw then Mizoram governor Kambhampati Hari Babu move to Odisha instead. This week former Army Chief V K Singh was appointed as his replacement, to navigate the complex dynamics of being largely sandwiched between Bangladesh and Myanmar.

• 🇰🇪 Kenya: President Ruto's on-going woes intensified late last year, after his Vice President, Rigathi Gachagua was impeached for corruption and undermining the government. Ruto then reached out to his rival, former President Uhuru Kenyatta, and hey-presto, this week a newly-reshuffled cabinet including three of Kenyatta's allies, was approved by Parliament,.

• 🇲🇶 Martinique: Over in the Caribbean EU, Etienne Desplanques has been sent to replace Jean-Christophe Bouvier as the new Prefect of Martinique after a difficult 2024.

• 🇲🇿 Mozambique: New President Daniel Chapo was sworn in amidst ongoing violent protests, and promptly appointed his new Prime Minister — Maria Benvinda Levy — along with the first twelve cabinet ministers. The rest should follow soon.

• 🇳🇨 New Caledonia: following on from last week's story of the Cabinet selecting a President, this week they got on with their next task: apportioning the various ministerial offices amongst themselves. Constitutionally this is supposed to be about collegial consensus; practically, well, there's always somewhere worse.

• 🇵🇼 Palau: Back in 2020, popular President Tommy Remengesau was unable to re-run, being term-limited. Instead, his brother-in-law, and previous rival, Surangel Whipps Jr., ran against, and defeated the then-Vice-President Raynold Oilouch. But the restriction is only on serving more than two consecutive terms, so this go around Remengesau returned to try to get his old job back for a fifth time. But after what initially promised to be another very tight race, Whipps ended up taking almost 60% of the vote, and was re-inaugurated this week. But to complicate things further, the Vice President is elected separately, rather than on a joint ticket, and incumbent Uduch Sengebau-Senior was defeated by, you guessed it, Raynold Oilouch. The VP is automatically a part of the Cabinet, so although Remengesau has kept everyone else in their existing positions, Oilouch has now also taken over as Justice Minister from Senior.

• 🇵🇱 Poland: In December, the controversy-plagued Minister of Science and Higher Education, Dariusz Wieczorek, resigned, apologising for the anyone-could-do-it mistake of mixing up hectares and square metres on his asset declaration. Marcin Kulasek has now been appointed as his replacement.

• 🇼🇸 Samoa: People seem to be paying Samoa rather more attention than usual at the minute, albeit primarily because of a newfound interest in yet-another crazy RFK Jr story. But there's plenty of domestic shenanigans going on too. The latest round kicked off when the Minister of Agriculture, Laʻauli Leuatea Polataivao, was charged with 10 criminal offences, refused to resign, and was subsequently sacked. This caused much turmoil, not least because he's also the founder and chairman of the ruling party, and the Prime Minister found herself faced with an internal revolt. The following day, after meeting one-on-one with all the other ministers, she fired three of them. She then appointed four new ministers, who now suddenly seem a lot more fond of her.

• 🇸🇾 Syria: Mohammad Abdul Rahman has been removed as Interior Minister, wiith Ali Keda, former Prime Minister of the SSG, appointed in his place. Members of the transitional government were originally meant to retain their previous positions until March, but my understanding of any of the nuances of what's going on here is even more shallow than usual, so if anyone can point at any good background material or commentary, that would be very much appreciated.

• 🇻🇪 Venezuela: A new Ministry of Foreign Trade has been created, with Deputy Minister for Europe (and niece of oil bigwig Humberto Calderón Berti) Coromoto Godoy appointed as its head.

Parliamentary picks:

• 🇵🇼 Palau had the only new legislative term starting this week, with a record number of women elected. (Six. In total. Across two chambers. Small steps.)

• 🇧🇬 Bulgaria maintains a strict separation between Government and Parliament, so thirteen new MPs took office to replace the ministers of the new cabinet.

• 🇬🇧 The United Kingdom has started working its way through the list of new Members of the House of Lords, but the antediluvian tradition of only introducing two new members per day means this may take some time.

• There were also way too many single-person replacements to do more than simply list them here with links for anyone who wants to investigate further:

  • 🇦🇲 Armenia: Mher Sahakyan → Armine Kheranyan

  • 🇦🇹 Austria: Karl Nehammer → Claudia Plakolm → Johanna Jachs

  • 🇧🇪 Belgium: (Wallonia) Nicolas Martin → Sylvie Muratore

  • 🇧🇦 Bosnia and Herzegovina: (Federation) Ive Raguž → Ivana Buntić-Jovanović

  • 🇧🇷 Brazil: Mayara Pinheiro → Júnior Mano

  • 🇨🇿 Czechia: Romanu Krausovi → Zdeňka Papouška

  • 🇫🇷 France: Olivier Véran → Camille Galliard-Minier

  • 🇩🇪 Germany: (Lower Saxony) Dennis True → Karola Elisabeth Margraf

  • 🇮🇩 Indonesia: Achmad Ghufron Sirodj → Muhammad Khozin

  • 🇮🇱 Israel: Zvi Sukkot → Amichai Eliyahux

  • 🇯🇵 Japan: Toshiyuki Adachi → Katsumi Ogawa

  • 🇰🇿 Kazakhstan: Gauhar Tanaşeva → Asylbek Nuralin

  • 🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan: Chynberdi Tolonov → Zhailoobai Nyshanov

  • 🇲🇹 Malta: Randolph Debattista → Ramona Attard

  • 🇳🇱 Netherlands: Thierry Baudet → Lidewij de Vos

  • 🇷🇴 Romania: Lucian Romașcanu → Laurențiu Țepeluș

  • 🇸🇷 Suriname: Asoitie Cyrano → Geneviévre Jordan

Next week:

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