Shuffled 2025-08

I’ve had less time than usual this week to pull this together, so unfortunately it’s going to have to be a “lite” edition, with significantly less background on what’s behind the changes everywhere. Some of the stories do look like there’s almost certainly an intriguing back-story, so if anyone can dig up any useful links, please do share. There’s also even more chance than usual that I’ve gotten completely the wrong end of the stick on something, so any corrections are also very welcome.

• 🇲🇩 Moldova: In what’s probably the story I most wish I’d had time to dig deeper into this week, Dorin Junghietu, who was recently appointed CEO of Moldovagaz (but hadn’t yet been approved by majority-shareholder Gazprom), has now become the new Energy Minister, in charge of resolving the ongoing energy crisis.

• 🇳🇿 New Zealand: The Commerce and Consumer Affairs minister Andrew Bayly has resigned after an “incident” where a heated discussion with a member of staff turned physical.

• 🇮🇩 Indonesia: A few weeks after hundreds of employees of the Ministry of Higher Education held a high profile “Black Monday” protest against the behaviour of the Minister, Satryo Brodjonegoro, he’s out, replaced by Brian Yuliarto.

• 🇧🇷 Brazil: Several days after she firmly denied rumours of her resignation, Nísia Trindade has been fired, in what appears to be—at least in part—yet another country ousting a Health Minister over something covid-adjacent.

• 🇺🇿 Uzbekistan: Minister of Emergency Situations Abdulla Kuldashev has been fired, along with his deputies, due to the ministry becoming increasingly more bureaucratic and not following legal requirements when issuing permits.

• 🇪🇨 Ecuador: If it feels like only yesterday we saw the Interior Minister being replaced, that’s because Fausto Buenaño didn’t even make it through a single week before resigning for “personal reasons”. Next up: former security chief, John Reimberg.

• 🇵🇭 Philippines: Transport Secretary Jaime Bautista has quit for definitely-not-performance-reasons and been replaced by the former covid testing czar. Press Secretary Cesar B. Chavez is also out in favour of a TV broadcaster.

• 🇱🇻 Latvia: Prime Minister Evika Siliņa attempts to turn the government off and on again, to see it works any better, by asking one minister from each of the three coalition partners to resign.

• 🇨🇴 Colombia: having essentially emptied the Cabinet over the last few weeks, this week sees it filling up again, with new Interior, Defence, and Energy ministers.

• 🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan: The former State Agency for Architecture, Construction, Housing and Communal Services has been converted into a Ministry, with a corresponding boost for its former Head, Nurdan Oruntaev, into a full Minister position. Separately, Altynbek Maksutov has been dismissed as Culture Minister.

• 🇧🇲 Bermuda: The PLP dropped a few seats in the recent election, but still have a comfortable majority, so David Burt continues as Premier for now (though has promised to step down next year). The new cabinet has many of the same members as before, though most have rotated positions.

• 🇧🇯 Benin: in what I believe to be the first death of a sitting cabinet member this year, Minister of Secondary Education Kouaro Yves Chabi has died in a car crash.

Next week:

Anguilla, Austria, China, Dominican Republic, Faroes, Iran, Kazakhstan, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vietnam, and more…