Shuffled 2025-07

Unless I’m overlooking a lot of stories somewhere (in which, as always, please let me know), this has been the quietest week of the year so far. Even with a relatively small number of changes to look at, though, we not only meet our quotas for corruption and Russian meddling, but in a refreshing change from people wanting to steal an entire country’s assets, we get a much more low-key dose of kleptomania in Portugal:

🇷🇴 Romania: At the end of November, Romania attempted to have its Presidential election. After the first round, a largely-unknown far-right ultra-nationalist Putin-admiring conspiracy-theorist, Călin Georgescu, took the lead with just under 23% of the vote. But before the subsequent run-off could be held, the legal challenges were already playing out. The Constitutional Court at first saw no reason to intervene beyond some recounting, but then the outgoing term-limited President, Klaus Iohannis, decided to declassify the intelligence reports that connected Georgescu’s Tiktok-dominated campaign to extremist groups, organised crime, and—though stopping short of directly crediting Moscow—drew out the parallels to previous Kremlin ops in neighbouring Ukraine and Moldova. With all sorts of allegations of money-laundering, vote-buying, forgery, use of banned symbols, and breaches of election finance laws, the court then reversed itself, annulled this round, and scheduled a replacement election for May.

But this also required extending Iohannis’ term, which was wildly unpopular not only with Georgescu’s supporters, but, well, pretty much everyone, as during his ten years in office he’d moved from a champion of reform and renewal to much more of a scandal-laden authoritarian who’d raced past Hungary to take Romania to last place in the EU in the Economist’s annual Democracy Index.

And so, faced with a Parliamentary no-confidence vote that would start the process of impeachment, this week Iohannis stepped down, and, following the order of succession, Senate President Ilie Bolojan takes over until the new election.

🇨🇴 Colombia: After last week’s chaos of half the Cabinet resigning, this week saw some of the replacements start to trickle in. Some have been largely pro-forma, like the Deputy Minister of the Interior, Gustavo García, being officially designated the Acting Minister until a proper replacement is found, but others have raised a few more eyebrows, like new Labour Minister Antonio Sanguino, who was investigated for influence peddling and bribery in his previous role as Chief of Staff to the Mayor of Bogotá.

🇵🇹 Portugal: After a very stable first year, Luís Montenegro’s government has seen its first mini-reshuffle, after the resignation of Hernâni Dias, the Secretary of State for Local Administration. After previously weathering an investigation for suspected kickbacks when he was mayor of Bragança, Dias is now under scrutiny for setting-up a couple of property development companies that seem very likely to benefit from the new land law his ministry is currently creating. Montenegro has taken the opportunity to move a bunch of other secretaries around, but it n that Dias’s replacement, Silvério Regalado, also needs to answer some pointed questions about past dealings with Montenegro’s former law-firm. (If you prefer your political scandals juicier, Portugal also has you covered with the recent case of deputy Miguel Arruda who’s accused of using his frequent flights home to the Azores from Parliament to steal other people’s luggage from the carousel, and sell the contents on Vinted. He claims the airport security footage is an AI-generated hoax by his political rivals; presumably the 17 suitcases found at his house were also cunningly planted by them.)

🇪🇨 Ecuador: After a very close first round in the recent presidential election, with incumbent Daniel Noboa’s lead over Luisa González at only 0.2%, Noboa seems to have decided he needs to address (or at least seem to address) some obvious issues before April’s run-off, in a country facing crisis after crisis after crisis. So it’s farewell to Finance Minister Juan Carlos Vega Malo, Interior Minister Mónica Palencia Núñez, Health Minister Manuel Antonio Naranjo Paz y Miño, and Minister of Economic and Social Inclusion Zaida Rovira Jurado in what seems to be an unashamedly political cabinet reshuffle.

🇹🇨 Turks and Caicos Islands: After the recent general election, where the PNP won 16 of the newly-enlarged 19 seats in the newly-renamed Parliament, Premier Washington Misick has also announced his new Cabinet. This mostly involves all the same people as before, though mostly in new roles, with, best I can tell, only a single departure: Tourism Minister Josephine Connolly has now been replaced by first-time MP Zhavargo Jermaine Jolly.

🇰🇿 Kazakhstan: In one of those “is it a promotion, or is it a demotion?” scenarios I come across from time to time (particularly in countries with significantly less independent political news coverage) Deputy Prime Minister Tamara Duisenova, who has had multiple stints as Labour Minister and Health Minister, and is a former Secretary of the ruling Nur Otan party, has been transferred out of the Cabinet, and is now a Presidential Assistant. I’m nowhere near au fait enough with Kazakh politics to be able to infer any of the implications or nuances of this, and my searches are drawing a blank. Anyone with more info, please let me know…

Catch-up:

🇻🇪 Venezuela: In a story I missed last week, Chávez’s former assistant Menry Fernández was replaced by long-time Governor of Yaracuy, Julio León Heredia, as the new Minister of Productive Agriculture and Lands. Again, reporting on this seems quite sparse, so I’ve no idea whether there’s something interesting behind it.

Next week:

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