Shuffled 2025-15

This week:

🇮🇷 Iran: In the midst of the ongoing economic crisis that saw the Finance Minister lose his job last month, Shahram Dabiri, the Vice President in charge of Parliamentary Affairs, misjudged the public mood by going on a lavish cruise to Antarctica (causing somewhat of an outcry in Argentina en passant). Although this was self-funded, President Masoud Pezeshkian swiftly fired him anyway, describing the trip as indefensible, and at odds with the principles of “simple living” that all officials should be following. Pezeshkian also finally accepted the resignation of Mohammad Javad Zarif (tendered a month earlier) as VP of Strategic Affairs, after his long battle with hardliners. Mohsen Esmaeili, former member of the Guardian Council, and the first ever non-cleric member of the Assembly of Experts, has returned to take over both roles.

🇧🇷 Brazil: Communications Minister Juscelino Filho has resigned to spend more time with his lawyers, after news broke of him having been formally accused of corruption over events from when he was still in Congress. These mostly relate to him allocating funds to a small town where his sister was Mayor, which were then used to disproportionately benefit family property. There are also allegations of accepting bribes, bid-rigging, and money laundering. Deputy Minister, Pedro Lucas, has been boosted up to the head of the table. 

🇸🇸 South Sudan: As well as shipping people they dislike to El Salvador, the US has also been deporting other immigrants back to their home countries. But when they tried to return Nimeri Garang to South Sudan, officials in Juba discovered he was actually a Congolese national, Makula Kintu, with a false ID, and refused him entry—only for the Americans to instantly amp it up to 11 by revoking all existing South Sudanese visas and blocking all new ones. In an attempt to try to de-escalate, the foreign ministry made a swift u-turn over admitting Garang/Kintu, and the following day Foreign Minister Ramadan Abdallah Goc also found himself out of a job. It presumably didn’t help that Goc had recently also been making critical-sounding noises about various domestic affairs, and particularly the treatment of detained opposition figures…

🇽🇰 Kosovo: In the recent elections, Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s Vetëvendosje party dropped from 58 seats to 48: still the largest party, but much further away from the 61 needed for a majority. But with most of the other parties refusing to work with them, forming a new government is proving to be rather tricky. The first step is for Parliament to begin its new session, and elect the Speakers, but multiple attempts to achieve this have so far failed. After some initial confusion over what should happen to the PM and Cabinet in the meantime, Kurti has now formally resigned, but it is still unclear whether this will be enough to even get a Speaker in place, never mind a new government. If not, new elections are likely.

🇱🇮 Liechtenstein: Continuing the almost unbroken run since the 1930s, rivals VU and FBP were yet again the two largest parties in the latest election, and have continued their Grand Coalition (although the DpL are now just one seat short of second place, with the best results of any third party ever in Liechtensteinian history). Outgoing PM Daniel Risch did not stand again, and Brigitte Haas becomes the country’s first ever female Prime Minister, bringing with her an almost entirely new Cabinet: Deputy PM Sabine Monauni is the only former member to remain, and best I can tell, none of the others have ever held any ministerial position before.

🇬🇦 Gabon: In the first presidential elections since the 2023 military coup, Brice Oligui Nguema, the interim president, has taken almost 95% of the votes. The combination of “coup-leader” and “overwhelming majority” don’t often pair well with ”free and fair elections”, but most observers believe these ones to have been remarkably well run. It seems Nguema really is hugely popular, with everyone relieved to finally be free from the 56-year Omar and Ali Bongo dictatorship.

🇩🇿 Algeria: Mohamed Boukhari, the Minister of Foreign Trade has been appointed as the President of the National Economic, Social and Environmental Council. Kamel Rezig, who previously held the position between 2021 and 2023 has returned to take over the Ministry again.

🇧🇩 Bangladesh: Bashir Uddin, who joined the cabinet late last year in charge of the Ministries of Commerce, and of Textiles and Jute, has now taken on a third role, in charge of Civil Aviation and Tourism: a position that has been nominally held by Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus since the death of the former holder, Hassan Ariff, in December.  

Follow-up:

🇷🇸 Serbia: A few weeks ago we saw the government finally resign, after months of escalating protests over the collapse of the railway station in Novi Sad. Now Đuro Macut, an endocrinologist and academic, with no previous political experience, has been appointed as a fresh, outsider Prime Minister. Macut is officially a non-partisan independent, though it didn’t take a lot of digging for people to discover that he previously spoke at pro-government rallies and is closely associated with President Vučić’s new Movement for the People and the State. Hopes that he might be a vehicle for significant change are also fading quickly, as the make-up of his Cabinet has remained almost identical to the outgoing government.

🇰🇷 South Korea: Fresh from upholding the impeachment of former President Yoon Suk Yeol for attempting a military take-over of the country, and overturning the impeachment of  Prime Minister, and interim President, Han Duck-soo, for appearing to block the action against Yoon, the Constitutional Court has next turned to the impeachment of Justice Minister Park Sung-jae for aiding and abetting Yoon. This time the Court ruled that the impeachment process had been legitimate, but that there was insufficient evidence that Park had actively backed or participated in the insurrection. Even though they ruled that Park had indeed broken some laws and procedures, these have been deemed not serious enough to warrant dismissal, and he has therefore been reinstated.

🇪🇨 Ecuador: As noted a few weeks ago, the first round of the Presidential election saw the two leading contenders—Daniel Noboa and Luisa González—enter the run-off neck-and-neck, with only 0.2% between them. But in a result that surprised most observers, existing president Noboa managed to emerge from the final vote with a 56-44 victory. González immediately cried foul, and has refused to concede, but despite lots of previous sketchy behaviour from Noboa, it does look like the elections were likely fair.

Catch-up:

🇦🇷 Argentina: In a story I missed at the start of the month, Herrera Bravo resigned as Legal and Technical Secretary of the Nation “for personal reasons”. María Ibarzabal Murphy, the existing Secretary of Strategic Affairs has now taken over both roles in a newly unified position. I strongly suspect there’s more to this story than I’ve been able to find, so if anyone can point me at anything that explains further, I’d be most grateful.

Next week:

Abkhazia, Comoros, Sudan, Vatican City, and more. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you know what to do…