Shuffled 2025-04

Another week, another flurry of offices changing hands around the world:

• 🇧🇲 Bermuda: Rena Lalgie, the first female and first Afro-Caribbean Governor, whose defining moment was probably being forced by the UK government to veto the legislation of cannabis, has this week been replaced by former Director of Ocean Policy at the Foreign Office, Andrew Murdoch.

• 🇧🇴 Bolivia: This week Alan Lisperguer became the second successive Environment Minister to be removed from office on charges of corruption and illicit enrichment. Denying the allegations, Lisperguer claimed that when he filed an affidavit declaring he only owned a single house or apartment, rather than the nine subsequently traced to him, this was merely just him not paying enough attention to detail. Álvaro Ruiz takes over as his replacement.

• 🇨🇦 Canada: Although he resigned earlier this month, Justin Trudeau remains as Prime Minister until his party chooses a replacement. This week House Leader Karina Gould became the first current Cabinet member to step down to throw her hat into that ring. Employment Minister Steven MacKinnon now takes on that position again too.

  • New Brunswick also has a new Lieutenant Governor, long-term advocate for Acadian culture and women's rights, Louise Imbeault.

• 🇨🇩 Congo-Kinshasa (DRC): The fall of Goma to Rwandan-backed M23 rebels has raised the stakes of the ongoing conflict considerably, not just in-country but throughout the region as a whole (and perhaps also Romania?). The governor of the region, General Peter Cirimwami Nkuba, was killed in the fighting, and has been replaced by Somo Kakule Evariste.

• 🇫🇮 Finland: With former Interior Minister Kai Mykkänen being elected as the new Mayor of Espoo — along with an almost 17% salary bump over being a lowly cabinet member — his position as Environment Minister has been passed to former Olympic sailor Sari Multala. Her position as Minister for Science and Culture in turn passes to Mari-Leena Talvitie, whose parliament seat will now be taken by Henrik Vuornos.

• 🇬🇷 Greece: Despite having not received a majority at either of the first two votes, Konstantinos Tasoulas will probably become the new President in March, but in the meantime he has had to vacate his position as Speaker of Parliament. Nikitas Kaklamanis, the former Mayor of Athens and Minister of Health, has been elected as the new Speaker, as close to unanimously as it's probably possible to get.

• 🇬🇭 Ghana: After his return back in Week 1, President Mahama has been waiting for Parliament to vet and approve his Cabinet nominees. This week the first six made it through, and were sworn in, swiftly followed a couple of days later by the next five.

• 🇮🇪 Ireland: In November's election, with a new constituency map and increased number of seats available, former bitter rivals but recent enemy-of-my-enemy partners Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael ended up with a combined 86 seats, just short of the 88 required for a majority. Their former junior partner, the Green Party, was almost completely wiped out, dropping from twelve seats to only one: not enough to roll-over the same coalition. With both still refusing to work with Sinn Féin, and neither the Social Democrats nor the Labour Party able to reach agreement with the centre-right parties, a scrappy coalition was eventually formed with the support of some independents, after agreeing to back one of the independents as Ceann Comhairle (Speaker). This might all have been fine, except the independents then also tried to form a technical group on the opposition benches, on the basis that only some were in government. Eyebrows were raised. Mayhem ensued. The process of electing the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and Cabinet were abandoned after the House needed to be suspended multiple times. The following day, after the Independents backed off, FF leader Micheál Martin finally became Taoiseach again with an agreement to hand the position back to FG leader, and outgoing Taoiseach, Simon Harris in 2027.

• 🇮🇱 Israel: Unhappy with the ceasefire agreement, Ben Gvir's far-right Jewish Power party followed through on threats to leave the government, vacating the ministerial positions for National Security, Heritage, and National Resilience. Tourism Minister Haim Katz has temporarily been given all three of these as additional roles for the next three months.

• 🇲🇻 Maldives: When Ibrahim Faisal was appointed as Tourism Minister in 2023, he was accused of only being given the role because his father Adhurey — leader of the ruling People's National Congress, and now also Speaker of Parliament — was one of President's Muizzu’s closest allies. Now, with reports of friction at the head of the party, Ibrahim has become the first minister to be dismissed from the current cabinet.

• 🇲🇿 Mozambique: After last week's promise that the rest of the cabinet should be appointed real soon now, this week saw that almost happen, with all but one of the remaining positions getting filled. This included the return to cabinet of Caifardine Manasse, the former FRELIMO head of propaganda who had previously been expelled from the provincial committee for inciting violence, leaking party secrets, and accusing colleagues of being involved in drug trafficking, and then responded by suing 23 members of parliament for defamation.

• 🇳🇿 New Zealand: Christopher Luxon has announced his first major Cabinet reshuffle since becoming Prime Minister at the end of 2023. Having previously cited public health as the most challenging issue for the government, Luxon has replaced former National Party deputy leader Shane Reti in that role with Simeon Brown. The demotion leaves no Māori ministers at the top of the table. There is, however, now a brand new position of Minister for the Better South Island.

• 🇱🇨 St Lucia: After three years with only an acting Governor-General, a full Governor-General has finally been appointed this week. That these are both the same person—Errol Charles—isn't especially surprising. More confusingly though, the appointment is back-dated, but only to last November. I can't tell whether this is the sort of thing that has an explanation that's obvious to anyone more knowledgeable, or is in the "why would you ever expect this sort of thing to ever make sense?" category.

• 🇹🇯 Tajikistan: Gulnora Hasanzoda, the Minister of Labour and Migration resigned this week, handing over to Soleha Kholmahmadzoda. This is a key position in a country heavily dependent on remittances from abroad, primarily in Russia, but workers there are faced with increased hostility from both the Russian state and population, whilst the EU, US, and China bide their time. A few days later the Defence Minister was shunted over to the State Secrets Department, and the Prosecutor General (whose marriage to the President's daughter recently fell apart) was also sacked. Rumours suggest these may be steps towards Emomali Rahmon handing power off to his son.

• 🇹🇴 Tonga: Facing a parliamentary no-confidence vote in December after a year of clashes with King Tupou VI, Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni surprised everyone by simply resigning. ʻAisake Eke was elected as his replacement, but only took office this week, after almost a month-long delay. It is widely believed that the gap was due to the king taking a much more active role than usual in process of selecting the new cabinet members. It was initially believed that there would be no Nobles in the cabinet, but the eventual unveiling ended up including Crown Prince Tupoutoʻa as Minister of Defence and of Foreign Affairs: the positions at the heart of the initial crisis a year earlier.

Catch-up:

• 🇧🇯 Benin: In a story I missed from a couple of weeks ago, Samou Seïdou Adambi, the Minister of Energy, was suspended from the Republic Bloc, for what they described as behaviours against the principles of the party. The following day he was sacked as a minister, and replaced by Paulin Akponna.

Next week:

Algeria, Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Norway, Peru, Sri Lanka, Syria, and more. Subscribe to get the full list every week.