Shuffled 2025-10

Welcome to another batch of new subscribers this week. Beehiiv tell me that some of you were referred here from Substack, but seem unwilling to break that down into anything actually useful, like from what newsletter. So if anyone could let me know¹ who’s been pointing thisaway, that would be most appreciated.

This week’s defenestrations:

🇨🇴 Colombia: Over the last few weeks we’ve watched the Cabinet slowly get refilled after the President essentially ousted everyone during a 5-hour live TV marathon. This week, one of the few survivors of the purge, Commerce Minister Luis Carlos Reyes (aka “Mr Taxes”) is now also out, after his very public spat with the current ambassador to the UK, and former Senate President, Roy Barreras, involving colourful threats (“You’re like a star football player, but imagine how ugly it would be if Messi’s legs were broken”) and colourful characters (Papa Smurf) escalated into another set of very public twitter exchanges with the new Interior Minister, Armando Benedetti. Cielo Rusinque has taken over at Commerce, with a very public declaration of transparency.

🇸🇸 South Sudan: It turns out that the shuffle a few weeks ago was much more contentious than I realised at the time, with opposition leader/First Vice President/long-term nemesis Riek Machar claiming that this breached the already-very-fragile power-sharing agreement, and demanding two of the sacked officials be reinstated immediately. Best I can tell there was no direct follow-through on this, but a few weeks later Oil Minister Puot Kang Chol, and deputy army chief Gabriel Duop Lam—both Machar allies—were arrested while the army placed Machar under house arrest again. Now, as multiple countries have started evacuating their staff from the country, Kiir has also replaced a further three ministers. Best I can tell these are all from his own faction, so I’m really sure yet what’s behind it, or it might affect the latest tensions (pointers very welcome!) [Last minute update: Machar’s SPLM-IO party has now withdrawn from the security arrangements of the peace deal]

🇨🇱 Chile: Back in January, we saw the Minister of National Assets, Marcela Sandoval, pushed out after a shambolic attempt to purchase Salvador Allende’s former house was ruled unconstitutional. Well, that was far from the end of that. Sandoval has since been claiming that she raised the issues in advance; there have been various tax fraud investigations against people involved—including the President; and it has come out that the property price also magically jumped up by nearly $100 million (I’m assuming that’s CLP, so €100,000). So this week, Maya Fernández, no longer able to play the kerfuffle-inducing dual-role of being both Defence Minister and co-owner of her grandfather’s house, finally stepped down from the former and has been replaced by former Education Minister Adriana Delpiano.

🇭🇹 Haiti: At pretty much this time last year, Haiti made world news when revolutionary gang leader Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier managed to take control of the airport, leaving Prime Minister Ariel Henry unable to return to the country. Henry ended up resigning, and a Transitional Presidential Council was put in place until proper elections could be held. Membership of this Council is broad, with strict requirements (e.g. not sanctioned, or indicted), but its members are prohibited from standing in the election when it happens. The Head of the Council also rotates every 5 months, so this week it was the turn of former Prime Minister Fritz Jean to take over.

🇵🇹 Portugal: When we last looked in a few weeks ago³ , Prime Minister Montenegro had just made a mini-shuffle to try to stave off some lurking scandals. Well, this week, that escalated a little. With more questions being asked about his family’s law firm receiving regular payments from a casino business, the Prime Minister decided to hold a confidence vote to “dispel uncertainty”. But this backfired, with MPs voting 142-88 to bring down the government, almost a year to the day after they took over when the previous Prime Minister also resigned due to a corruption scandal.

🇵🇭 Philippines: Paul Mercado has become the officer-in-charge of ICT, after Secretary Ivan Uy’s resignation. No official reason has been given for the departure, but rumours have been circulating for months that the President has become increasingly frustrated by Uy’s frequent overseas trips causing him to miss more cabinet meetings than he has attended.

🇧🇾 Belarus: Last week we saw the entire Cabinet do the dance of resigning at the start of a new Presidential term. This week Lukashenko decided which of them could stay in office for a while longer, and which were out. The most notable is probably a change of Prime Minister, with Roman Golovchenko shuffled off to become the new chair of the National Bank, and Alexander Turchin taking over. I’m not entirely clear how much power the PM even notionally has after the 2022 “reforms”, but it’s probably safe to say we won’t see Turchin off on any frolics of his own any time soon.

🇱🇻 Latvia: A couple of weeks ago, Prime Minister Evika Siliņa decided to ctrl-alt-del the government, by resigning one minister from each of the three coalition parties. This week each party’s replacement was approved by the parliament. I’m yet to find anything that can give me even the faintest inkling of what this sort of shake up is expected to achieve.

🇪🇪 Estonia: Presumably also unconvinced by the value of their southern neighbour’s approach, the Estonian government has instead gone for the option of simply booting their troublesome third party out of the coalition. Prime Minister Kristen Michal had initially maintained the coalition he inherited after predecessor Kaja Kallas resigned to become EU High Representative, but increased tensions between the parties have led to the ouster of the Social Democrats, leaving the other two parties as technically a minority government (with 50/101 seats), but with a de facto razor-thin majority once party-switchers are counted (under the current rules anyone who leaves a parliamentary group is officially registered as factionless, even if they join another party.)

🇸🇰 Slovakia: Taking a different approach still, Slovakia is testing out the idea that the best way to prop up an awkward three party coalition is actually by taking one portfolio away from each of the two other members and giving them to Prime Minister Fico’s Smer party. The first of these to take effect is in the Tourism and Sports Ministry, where Dusan Keketi has now been replaced by Rudolf Huliak.

🇫🇴 Faroes: Last week’s surrealist escapades with the Norway pout quota has led to a mini-reshuffle, bringing not only a new Fisheries Minister (former mayor Jóhan Christiansen), but also seeing the interim replacement Fisheries Minister, Sirið Stenberg, bumped up to Foreign Minister, with former Deputy PM Høgni Hoydal now entirely out of the Cabinet.

🇧🇩 Bangladesh: The Adviser allocated to the Ministry of Education (with the status of a Minister), Wahiduddin Mahmud, who was previously also Adviser allocated to the Ministry of Planning (with the status of a Minister), is now only the Adviser allocated to the Ministry of Planning (with the status of a Minister), as CR Abrar has taken over as the Adviser allocated to the Ministry of Education (with the status of a Minister). Shortly thereafter the Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser (with the status of a State Minister) assigned to the Ministry of Education, M Aminul Islam was asked to resign, while Sheikh Moin Uddin was appointed as Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser (with the status of a State Minister) assigned to the Ministry of Road Transport and Bridges, and Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb was appointed as Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser (with the status of a State Minister) assigned to the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology. This was then followed by Anisuzzaman Chowdhury being appointed as Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser (with the status of a State Minister) assigned to the Ministry of Finance. I suspect that a bunch of student activists overthrowing the government probably liked the initial idea of “hey, instead of all these fancy titles, let’s just call everyone advisers”, but are now realising that “Minister of Education” and “Minister of State for Education” etc might have actually been simpler all along.

🇲🇽 Mexico: In the chaos caused by a new tenant moving in next door² and making all sorts of threats, Finance Secretary (and excellent falsehoods-about-names test-case) Rogelio Ramírez de la O has resigned. Undersecretary Edgar Amador has in turn been promoted upwards.

🇵🇰 Pakistan: Last week we saw government efficiency in overdrive, with the federal cabinet doubling in size. They were actually so efficient that all the new ministers were appointed before anyone had even figured out what they would be ministers for. This week they all got to find out what exactly they’d be doing.

🇧🇷 Brazil: When Health Minister Nísia Trindade got replaced by Alexandre Padilha a couple of weeks ago, that left a vacancy in Padilha’s previous position at Institutional Relations. This week that gap got filled, by Dilma Rousseff’s former Chief of Staff, Gleisi Hoffmann (in turn freeing a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, now filled by Lenir de Assis.)

🇰🇼 Kuwait: Minister of Electricity Mahmoud Boushehri has resigned, and been replaced by Dr. Noura Al-Mashaan as acting minister. English-language sources reveal nothing more than “an Amiri Decree was issued”, and my Arabic skills are close to non-existent, so I haven’t been able to find anything more than a single tweet saying this was for personal reasons. If anyone knows anything different, please get in touch!

Next week:

Belize, Canada, Greece, Lebanon, Moldova, Somalia, Trinidad and Tobago, Ukraine, and more. As always, if you haven’t already subscribed, you know what to do, and if you have, then spreading the word is most appreciated.

1  Simply replying to this should work, or you can email directly to [email protected] or find me at https://bsky.app/profile/tmtm.com

2  One day I’ll get to write one of these with not even an indirect reference to US politics, but yet again that’s not this week.

3  If you weren’t following along then, the other story, about the far right MP accused of stealing other passengers’ suitcases from airport carousels on his frequent trips is well worth your time.