Shuffled 2025-09

After a relatively quiet fortnight, this week more than made up for the slowdown, bringing a record number of changes to convey. (PS: welcome to all the new subscribers directed here from last week’s webcurios. Presumably you’ll have no problem with a monster wall of text here…)

🇮🇷 Iran: The economy has had a tough year, with 35% inflation, a 75% drop in the value of the rial, and escalating crypto battles. This week Parliament had enough, and impeached the Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance, Abdolnaser Hemmati. Deputy Minister Rahmatollah Akrami has taken over for now.

🇦🇮 Anguilla: While lots of countries struggle to come up with a coherent AI strategy, Anguilla have perfected theirs, bringing in 20% of all government revenue last year from sales of .ai domain names. What to do with all this new money, and whether it’s likely to be a long-term boost, or just a fad-du-jour was a major issue in February’s election—presumably paying close attention to prior form in Tuvalu and Tonga, etc. The AUF ended up returning to government after doubling their seat count, and Cora Richardson-Hodge becomes the first ever female Premier, with former England cricketer Cardigan Connor as deputy.

🏴󠁧󠁥󠁡󠁢󠁿 Abkhazia: Back in November, significant protests around the relationship with Russia ended with the President and Prime Minister both being removed from office, pending a new presidential election. In not-really-very-surprising news, the Russia-favoured candidate, former VP and acting President since November, Badra Gunba, comfortably won. The campaign was, natch, full of lots of the usual shenanigans, but it probably also didn’t help that the original opposition candidate, Kan Kvarchia, had to step down after being injured during the parliamentary cryptocurrency debate-turned-gun-fight in December.

🇨🇳 China: The head of the Ministry of Industry has vanished from public view in the last few months. This tends to be a bad sign: several other members of the State Council similarly disappeared last year to then face corruption charges after being replaced. There’s no word yet of any similar charges for Jin Zhuanglong, but this week the governor of Liaoning, Li Lecheng, was moved into this role. Wang Xinwei in turn takes over as Governor.

🇬🇷 Greece: In 2023 two trains collided head-on, killing 57 and injuring nearly 200 more — the most serious railway crash in Europe since the Santiago de Compostela derailment in 2013. The long-awaited independent report into the incident was finally released at the end of February, blaming human error, out-dated infrastructure, and systemic failures. With ongoing questions about government responsibility, and even cover-ups, the then-Deputy-PM Christos Triantopoulos has this week resigned from his current ministerial role to facilitate a parliamentary inquiry.

🇬🇧 United Kingdom: Despite being a former Shadow Chancellor, Anneliese Dodds only actually got to attend cabinet in the current government through the two-junior-positions-in-a-trenchcoat trick (Women, and International Development). But after Starmer returned from Washington and slashed the aid budget, she resigned from both positions, claiming this would make it impossible to maintain commitments to Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine. Jenny Chapman has taken over the Development portfolio, with Jacqui Smith the new Women and Equalities minister.

🇫🇴 Faroes: Fishing Minister Dennis Holm has resigned to—according to the Attorney General—“ensure political peace of mind”. Getting to the story behind such a weird phrase has been an interesting exercise, but this seems to be connected to an accusation that he didn’t have the right legal authority to allocate 32,500 tonnes of cod. That’s not the most meaningful explanation either, but Google Translate does a remarkably bad job on Faroese, currently claiming that this has something to do with a “Norway pout quota.”

🇦🇹 Austria: the previously-discussed difficulties in forming a workable coalition have finally been resolved, with the ÖVP and Social Democrats managing to find a centrist agreement this time around, with the additional support of Neos. Christian Stocker (ÖVP) has become the new Chancellor, with SPÖ leader Andreas Babler as Vice-Chancellor. The far-right populist FPÖ won more seats than any other party, but with under 30% of the vote, and no-other significant party willing to work with them, they don’t get to be in government, and despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the peanut gallery, that’s only surprising to people who don’t understand what it means to “win” an election in a multi-party proportional representation system. [ed.: subsequent 20,000-word rant about how “lazy political reporters confusing plurality with majority will be the destruction of us all” deleted.]

🇧🇩 Bangladesh: Last July a group of student activists led a revolution to dismantle what they saw as an increasingly fascist state. The prime minister ended up fleeing to India, and the students recruited Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus as “Chief Adviser” to oversee the country’s transition back to democracy. This week one of the main public faces of the student group, Nahid Islam, who has been running two Ministries, resigned so he could start and run a new political party, with an eye to the future elections. Another of the student coordinators, Mahfuz Alam, has taken over the Information and Broadcasting ministry, with Yunus overseeing Posts, Telecommunications and IT for now.

🇰🇿 Kazakhstan: Kanat Sharlapayev came into government amidst a degree of controversy (having to renounce his Russian citizenship and take Kazakh), and weathered a fair share of it over the next 18 months—particularly in relation to a hugely unpopular recycling fee that ended up adding an average year’s salary onto the cost of a new car. Now he’s out as Industry Minister, in favour of Yersaiyn Nagaspayev: the former Head of New Projects at the state railway.

🇻🇦 Vatican City: I get that most of the focus pretty much always goes to the Head of State, and in the last few weeks this is even more true. But it’s worth paying some attention to the Head of Government too, as this week Cardinal Fernando Vérgez Alzaga turned 80, forcing his retirement as President of the Governorate, and the new president is, for the first time ever, a woman: Sister Raffaella Petrini.

🇨🇱 Chile: With Gabriel Boric unable to run again in November’s presidential election (consecutive terms are prohibited), and still-popular former President Michelle Bachelet continuing to look very unlikely to run again, there’s been somewhat of a gaping hole on the left for a plausible replacement. This week the Interior Minister (and former Mayor of Santiago), Carolina Tohá has announced her candidacy, resigning her cabinet position. The Secretary General of the Presidency, Álvaro Elizalde, becomes the new Minister of the Interior, with Undersecretary Macarena Lobos promoted up into the main role.

🇻🇳 Vietnam: With government efficiency all the rage these days, the CPV has decided to “streamline” things by appointing an extra two new Deputy Prime Ministers (Mai Van Chinh and Nguyen Chi Dung), and creating six new ministries.

🇵🇰 Pakistan: Presumably seeing Vietnam’s efficiency drive as amateurish, Shehbaz Sharif has leant in even further to his austerity plan and doubled the size of the federal cabinet from 21 to 43 members, plus an extra four Special Assistants to the Prime Minister (definitely not to be confused with Advisors, as there’s a constitutional limit on how many of those there can be).

🇺🇿 Uzbekistan: After seven and a half years on the job, it’s goodbye to Interior Minister Polat Bobojonov, sometimes described as the most distant of all the ministers for his repeated refusal to address persistent complaints about human rights violations including prison deaths and torture allegations, even after Presidential demands for increased accountability. Aziz Tashpulatov takes over.

🇭🇺 Hungary: controversial Economy Minister turned controversial Central Bank Governor, György Matolcsy, who is generally “credited” for Orbán’s unorthodox economic policies (and who famously lost a supreme court case over whether or not it was fair to accuse him of theft of public money), has reached the end of his two permitted terms, and has again been replaced by Mihály Varga, who previously succeeded him as the economy minister.

🇧🇾 Belarus: After a poor showing in January’s presidential election, where Alexander Lukashenko defeated his closest challenger by only 84 points, his seventh term begins with the cabinet doing the dance of formally resigning, though everyone stays in place until the new cabinet is formed.

🇧🇧 Barbados: Two ministers have resigned from the Cabinet: Marsha Caddle citing a disagreement over principles, and Corey Lane to “spend more time with his family” (presumably entirely unrelated to his recent questioning by police.) Rather than simply re-filling these positions, PM Mottley has taken the opportunity for a wider reshuffle.

🇺🇾 Uruguay: Maintaining their status as the dramalessnessest democracy in Latin America, Uruguay swung left again in the most recent presidential election and former history-teacher Yamandu Orsi took office this week promising no major policy shifts. The inauguration was swiftly followed by the introduction of the first members of new cabinet (which claims to have greatly improved gender balance, but by my count is still under 30%)

🇨🇴 Colombia: After the President fired almost the entire Cabinet a few weeks ago, their replacements have slowly been being appointed. This week the country got its first ever indigenous minister, Lena Estrada Añokazi, in charge of Environment, plus new faces at Sport, Equality, and ICT.

🇩🇴 Dominican Republic: In January former TV presenter Milagros “The Diva” Germán resigned as Minister of Culture, but it took until this week for President Abinader to replace her, as part of a wider cabinet reshuffle that also bade farewell to Deligne Ascensión Burgos (replaced by former Senate President Eduardo Estrella) and saw Luis Miguel de Camps move from Labour Minister to Education, displacing Ángel Hernández. Every week there’s at least one story where my search-fu fails me, and I’m at a complete loss as to any of the whys behind the what. This is that story this week. Pointers to what I’m missing, as always, very welcome…

🇺🇳 United Nations: Nawaf Salam recently stepped down as President of the International Court of Justice to take over as Prime Minister of Lebanon. That vacancy has now been filled by Yuji Iwasawa, the second Japanese judge to hold the position. In the court’s determination last July declaring Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank unlawful, Iwasawa wrote a separate concurrence, saying the court should have gone further.

🇮🇪 Ireland: Chief of the Defence Forces, Seán Clancy, is moving to Brussels to head the EU Military Committee for the next three years, during what will presumably be a quiet and uneventful period. Rossa Mulcahy takes over back home.

Catch-up:

I try to be as completist as possible every week, but sometimes stories slip by without me noticing. Thanks to a nameless reader who doesn’t wish for credit, I’m happy to point out two more recently overlooked cases:

🇻🇪 Venezuela: After previously missing the ouster of Menry Fernández, I then also missed the follow-up changes to the Ministers of Sport and of Ecosocialism. Clearly I need better Venezuelan sources.

🇧🇴 Bolivia: Actually I probably need better sources for all of South America, as I also missed Zenón Mamani taking over from Néstor Huanca a couple of weeks ago as Minister of Productive Development and Plural Economy

Please do point out any others I’ve missed.

Next week:

Brazil, Estonia, Haiti, Latvia, Mexico, Slovakia, South Sudan, and more. If you haven’t yet subscribed for updates, you know what to do. And if you have, yay! Now go persuade a friend to sign up too 🙂