Shuffled 2025-16

This week:

🇸🇩 Sudan: Foreign Minister Ali Youssef Ahmed al-Sharif has been fired after only a few months on the job. It’s hard to figure out what’s really going on, but there seem to be all sorts of complex geo-political shenanigans in play, with Sudan having announced their official recognition of Kosovo only a few days earlier, in a move seemingly brokered by Türkiye, and, surprise!, instantly denounced by Serbia—though taking the slightly less standard line of questioning the legitimacy not so much of Kosovo, as of the current Sudanese government. And of course all this is playing out several days after RSF-leader Hemedti announced a rival “Government of Peace and Unity” with, surprise!, himself as its head. Throw in the recent will-they-won’t-they agreement with Russia over a naval base, and the resulting pressure from the US to return to the won’t side, while the UK, France, and Germany try to solve the ongoing civil war by bringing everyone except the actual warring parties together, and the more I read the more confused I get. Good luck to the new minister, Hussein al-Amin al-Fadil, I guess?

🇷🇸 Serbia: Last week we saw the bulk of the new Cabinet appointed (or, largely, re-appointed). This week, at their first meeting, they chose to appoint Petar Janjić as the new Secretary-General in place of Novak Nedić, who has a much too colourful history for me to be able to do it justice here. (It’s probably never a good sign when the “Controversies” section of your Wikipedia page is longer than everything else put together). As is often the case, getting to the “why” of the replacement largely comes down to tasseography, and on this front Danas have a much better take than I could ever muster up.    

🇪🇨 Ecuador: Back in February, after an uncomfortably close first round of the presidential election, Daniel Noboa made a bunch of cabinet changes that many believed to be unabashedly political. And, surprise!, now that he’s won re-election, it’s time to shuffle some of them around again. Sariha Moya, who had replaced Verónica Abad Rojas during Noboa’s first botched attempt to oust her as Vice-President, but who then demurred during the second attempt, has been appointed as the new Finance Minister. Luis Alberto Jaramillo Granja who had been moved into that role back in February, returns to his former position as the Minister for Production and Foreign Trade, pushing out Carlos Alberto Zaldumbide who had been acting up into that role since February. (I think he’s still the vice-minister, but sources aren’t totally clear on that.)

🇰🇲 Comoros: At the start of April the new parliamentary term began. As the elections had been boycotted by most of the opposition parties, citing increased authoritarianism from President Azali Assoumani, it was no surprise that his CRC party ended up with 31 out of the 33 seats. He has now also unveiled his new cabinet, with 40% of the previous members gone, including the Ministers of the Interior; Health; and Justice.

🇬🇪 Abkhazia: Back in March we saw the new President and Prime Minister officially take office, and this week the new Cabinet was announced. A lot of the more junior positions remain unchanged, but most of the Vice Premiers have been replaced, or been demoted to a plain Minister; and on top of the need for a new Finance Minister (as Vladimir Delba is now Prime Minister), the former Ministers of Economy, Foreign Affairs, Education, and the Chief of Cabinet Staff are all now gone.

Death in office:

Only one this week, but I suspect everyone is already well aware of it. Kevin Farrell from Dublin (the one in Ireland, despite other countries wanting to claim him) takes over in the interim. 

Catch-up:

🇲🇲 Myanmar: Back in March (in a story that took way too long to find because the official National Unity Government website uses a very different transliteration of his name than pretty much anywhere else) Khun Bahan Htan, the Deputy Minister of Human Rights stepped down from the government-in-exile — though was very keen to note that he “continues to take part in the revolution”.  

🇭🇷 Croatia: And for one that slipped by me last week, Šime Erlić has resigned as Minister of Regional Development and EU Funds to stand in the upcoming election for Mayor of Zadar.

Next week:

Brazil, Nepal, Somalia, Trinidad and Tobago, and more. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you know what to do…