The Strategy Group Company | The Global Brief | Political Intelligence on the Balkans, Africa, South America and Southeast Asia | | Approximately a twelve-minute read |
| | I. | Balkans · The Lead The Vučić File: Ninety Days to Move, and He's Picking the Wrong Fight |
| | II. | Africa · Deep Dive Sudan: Don't Pick a Side. Pick a City. |
| | III. | South America Sánchez Has 38 Days. He's Running the Wrong Frame. |
| | IV. | Southeast Asia Marcos Picked the Wrong Impeachment. The 2028 Lane Just Cracked Open. |
| | V. | Africa Randrianirina Has 18 Months to Convince the Streets He Was Their General |
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| This issue is five files. Vučić has roughly ninety days before the Student List consolidates. Sudan's reconstruction contracting window is opening, and most Western firms are already eighteen months late. Sánchez has thirty-eight days in Peru and he is running the wrong frame. Marcos picked the wrong impeachment play, and the 2028 third-camp opening just cracked. And in Antananarivo, the colonel who took the palace has eighteen months to convince the streets he was their general.
Every one of these is a campaign someone will run, well or badly. Below is how we would run each.
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Ryan Rodgers
President, The Strategy Group Company |
Washington, D.C.
1 May 2026 |
| | I. | Balkans · The Lead Belgrade · Banja Luka · Skopje |
The Vučić File: Ninety Days to Move, and He's Picking the Wrong Fight Magyar's win removed the EU shield Belgrade was hiding behind. Vučić's first defensive move is a 2026 elite play to a 1999 voter base. Three regional leaders are now running campaigns they don't know they're running. | Tisza took the Hungarian election on 12 April with 138 of 199 seats, a two-thirds majority. Parliament convened on 17 April with Magyar designated to form the new government. On 23 April, Hungary and Slovakia formally lifted their vetoes on a €90 billion EU support package for Ukraine and the next round of Russia sanctions, ending the most consequential pro-Moscow obstruction inside the EU. The European Parliament's enlargement strategy report, adopted in February, had already grouped Serbia with Georgia and Türkiye as candidates whose accession process has “effectively come to a standstill.” Vučić responded on 14 April by confirming a Serbian-Israeli drone production partnership and floating a Vidovdan (28 June) snap election. Banja Luka quietly retained US lobbying services valued at $1.8 million.
“Belgrade voters do not care about Tel Aviv. They care about why their kid moved to Vienna.”
Call snap elections in the next thirty days, before the Student List finalizes its candidate roster. Run on Kosovo, sovereignty, and EU hostility. Do not run on the economy. Net FDI fell 67.5% in the first five months of 2025 versus the prior year, youth emigration is structural, and the Novi Sad canopy collapse is still in the bloodstream. The frame that wins is “they want to take Serbia,” not “we are managing the transition.” The Belgrade pensioner who decides this election wants a strongman with grievances, not a technocrat with deals.
The mistake he is making this week is the Israel drone deal. That is a 2026 elite-positioning move played to a 1999 voter base. Whoever is running his comms thinks they are signaling to Washington and missing that the audience that votes is at home. Pull the Israel announcement off the front page; put a Kosovo-themed rally there instead. He has ninety days. He is burning week three on the wrong story.
| ❖ | If We Had the Student List's File |
Do not run an anti-corruption campaign. Vučić has thirteen years of practice eating those. The opening is generational, not ethical. The frame is “who do you want running this country in 2030?” Make Vučić defend the past while you own the future. Let the parents of the canopy victims keep that file open in the courts; do not center your candidate on it. The campaign that wins is the one that tells the twenty-eight-year-old in Niš why staying is a better bet than Munich. The student-led mobilization that has held the streets since November 2024 has the demographic mandate to anchor that message; what it lacks is a candidate vehicle.
The $1.8M lobbying contract is a down payment on the wrong product. Dodik does not need a K Street firm to charm the Hill on a long horizon. He needs a US sovereignty story that aligns with current administration priorities and lands in one specific room before EU sanctions do. The window to build that bilateral cover is two months, not six. With Orbán out, the EU mechanism that had been frozen for years on Republika Srpska sanctions is now live. The leverage is gone unless he can show Washington a reason to provide its own.
The Number That Defines the File 67.5% Decline in Serbian net foreign direct investment, first five months of 2025 versus the same period in 2024 Source: Atlantic Council, Freedom and Prosperity Atlas 2026 Recommended readers: Anyone with a candidate or a portfolio company in the Western Balkans · EU government affairs principals · Funds tracking enlargement
| | II. | Africa · Deep Dive Khartoum · Port Sudan · Nyala |
Sudan: Don't Pick a Side. Pick a City. A de facto partition is hardening on the Red Sea. The reconstruction contracting window is opening now. Most Western firms are about to walk in and book the wrong meeting first. | El-Fasher fell to the RSF on 26 October 2025 after an eighteen-month siege. The Sudanese Armed Forces returned to Khartoum on 11 January 2026. Together those two dates draw the partition: SAF holds the east and center, RSF holds the west. The Conflict Insights Group's “Blood Money” report on 24 April exposed the UAE-Colombia mercenary pipeline that delivered El-Fasher. The Saudi-UAE rivalry has paralyzed the US-led Quad. The Berlin peace conference invited neither belligerent. This war does not end on a piece of paper. It hardens.
“Don't pick a side. Pick a city. The firm that gets crushed first is the one that books Hemedti in Dubai before booking al-Burhan in Khartoum.” | ❖ | If a Western Principal Walks In Tomorrow |
The rule is do not pick a side, pick a city. Khartoum reconstruction belongs to SAF, with Saudi and Egyptian principals controlling the coin purse. Port Sudan is the SAF logistical anchor and the most attractive Red Sea entry point for principals seeking SAF-aligned exposure. Nyala belongs to the RSF until the partition resolves and is contracting territory only for principals who can absorb ICC reputational risk. The firm that gets crushed first is the one that books a meeting with Hemedti's Dubai network before booking one with al-Burhan's Khartoum office. Sequence matters; in this market, the first meeting determines the next ten.
| ❖ | The Campaign Opportunity Is Bigger Than the Contracting One |
Both sides need international legitimacy and neither has a comms operation that can build it. SAF is sending out generals; RSF is sending out denials. Whoever lands a credible Western strategist on either side first owns the post-war narrative architecture and the diplomatic protocol that follows it. The Saudi-UAE rivalry is the bug; for an entrant, it is the feature. You position with one patron and the other side's patron pays your enemies' bills. Most political shops will not take this work. The ones that will should be charging $80K a month and running an integrated GR-comms-coalition stack.
From the Ground
TSGCo is monitoring the SAF-side Khartoum recovery framework through Saudi-aligned advisory contacts and tracking (no engagement) the RSF “peace government” entity in Nyala. The active workstream is sequencing: which Riyadh introduction, which Cairo meeting, which Khartoum ministerial, in which order. Western firms entering blind in 2026 will spend the rest of the decade unwinding the wrong first call.
The Number That Defines the File 9M Sudanese internally displaced. An additional 4.5 million have crossed into Chad, Libya, South Sudan, and Egypt. Source: The Soufan Center, April 2026 Recommended readers: Red Sea logistics principals · Gulf-aligned investors · ICC-aware general counsel
| | III. | South America Lima · Bogotá · São Paulo |
Sánchez Has 38 Days. He's Running the Wrong Frame. The right has won three consecutive South American cycles. Peru is the diagnostic case. The candidate trying to break the streak is repeating the Castillo error. | Milei's La Libertad Avanza took 40.68% to the Peronists' 31.69% on 26 October. Kast won Chile's runoff with 58.16% on 14 December. Bolivia ousted the socialist coalition that had governed for nearly two decades. Ecuador re-elected Noboa. The 26 April Ipsos poll has Peru's runoff between Keiko Fujimori and the leftist Roberto Sánchez tied at 38% each. Sánchez is the only leftist still positioned to win a national runoff in this cycle.
“Make Keiko ungovernable, not corrupt. Run against the regional pattern, not against the candidate.” | ❖ | If We Had Sánchez's File |
Stop running on Keiko's corruption. That is the Castillo error and it is part of why Castillo is in jail. Fujimori voters know about her record and have been voting for her anyway since 2011. The play that works is making her ungovernable, not corrupt. The frame: “The right has had four chances on this continent in twelve months. Argentina. Chile. Bolivia. Ecuador. Show me the jobs.” Make the spillover the indictment. Run against the regional pattern, not against the candidate. The candidate is replaceable; the pattern is identifiable. Argentine inflation is down to roughly thirty per cent under Milei but the basket cost is still where it hurts. Use it.
The second move is the Castillo problem. Sánchez served as Castillo's foreign trade minister. The Fujimori camp will run that footage on loop. The counter is not to deny the connection; it is to own a corrected version. “I served. I learned. The mistake we made was governing as an opposition movement. We will govern as a government.” Take the hit, control the wound, deny her the kill shot.
| ❖ | If We Had Cepeda's File in Colombia |
He is at 44.3% on the most recent Invamer with thirty days to 31 May. The right is fragmented (de la Espriella 21.5%, Valencia 19.8%) and his runoff math is favorable. The error he is making is gaining ground on Petro continuity. Petro's approval rebounded to roughly 49% in early 2026 but Petro is not on the ballot. Cepeda needs to be the post-Petro left, not the next-Petro left. The 25 April FARC dissident bombing on the Pan-American highway, which killed twenty, is his opening, not his liability. Most leftist candidates would dodge it. He should run at it. The candidate who claims security ownership in a way Petro cannot owns the moderate center for the runoff. Valencia is the more dangerous opponent than de la Espriella; she pulls center voters Cepeda needs.
| ❖ | The Quiet Brazil 2026 Read |
The Trump operation will try the Argentina playbook in Brazil. It backfires. Argentina worked because Milei was already aligned and the Peronist economic record was indefensible. Chile worked because Boric was exhausted and security was in collapse. Brazil 2026 has neither condition. A Lula-fatigued but not Lula-broken electorate punishes overt foreign intervention. The Bolsonaro-aligned campaign that wins is the one that puts daylight between itself and Mar-a-Lago, not the one that imports the model. If we were advising a Brazilian center-right hopeful right now, we would be running the “we are not Milei” frame for the primary and the “we are sovereign” frame for the general.
The Number That Defines the File 38–38 Fujimori versus Sánchez in the Peru runoff, dead-heat polling as of 26 April. Three consecutive cycles of right-wing consolidation pivot here. Source: Ipsos Peru, 26 April 2026 Recommended readers: LATAM-allocated capital · Brazil 2026 strategists · Anyone running comms in a continental election cycle
| | IV. | Southeast Asia Manila · Davao · Jakarta |
Marcos Picked the Wrong Impeachment. The 2028 Lane Just Cracked Open. A 53-0 spectacle nationalises Sara Duterte's victimhood narrative. The Davao brother is the next move her camp should make this week. The most valuable real estate in Philippine politics is the lane nobody is building. | On 29 April the Philippine House Justice Committee voted 53-0 probable cause to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte. The plenary vote is set for 4 May. Senate President Sotto has said the impeachment court can convene as early as the same week. Duterte leads 2028 presidential surveys, and Senate conviction by sixteen of twenty-four senators removes her from the ballot. Five senators are publicly aligned with her: Imee Marcos, Robin Padilla, Bong Go, Rodante Marcoleta, and Ronald dela Rosa. To convict, Marcos needs sixteen votes from the remaining nineteen senators, which means he can lose no more than three.
“Trials make villains. Hearings make daughters.”
The impeachment is the wrong play. He needed Duterte unable to run in 2028, but a 53-0 spectacle nationalizes her victimhood narrative and gives her base a martyr arc to organize around. The smart play was a delayed-trial strategy that kept the corruption case in normal courts where she has to defend, not perform. Trials make villains. Hearings make daughters. He is now exposed on three fronts: the Senate vote count, the Romualdez fracture (his cousin is publicly breaking with him over the flood control scandal), and the ICC trial of Rodrigo Duterte in The Hague that gives the Duterte camp a parallel grievance lever for the rest of his term. He cannot afford to lose more than three of nineteen Senate votes. If the count comes up short, his presidency is the lame duck and 2028 is hers to lose.
| ❖ | If We Had Duterte's File |
The move is the brother. Sebastian Duterte, mayor of Davao, becomes the 2028 placeholder while she fights the trial. Build his national profile this quarter. Even better: build him as a “post-Duterte Duterte.” Same name, less baggage, same coalition, fresher language on the drug war. The Marcos camp can't impeach a placeholder. The trial actually works for her if it ends in acquittal: martyrdom plus surrogate. The mistake the Duterte camp keeps making is letting her speak directly when she should be silent and the surrogates should be loud. Nobody in that camp is running discipline right now; they need to.
| ❖ | The Lane Nobody Is Building |
The most valuable real estate in Philippine politics right now is the third-camp 2028 lane and nobody is building it. A non-Marcos, non-Duterte centrist with executive experience and corruption distance has clean lanes for the first time in a decade because both legacy camps just spent down their structural credibility. The runway is twenty-four months, which means the campaign has to start in Q3 2026. By Q2 2027 it is too late to build. If a senator, governor, or business-aligned principal makes that call this quarter, they have a real path. If they wait, the dynasties absorb the oxygen back. This is the campaign nobody is talking about and the one we would build first if we were taking a Manila pitch this month.
| ❖ | The Jakarta Counter-Read |
Prabowo's Free Nutritious Meals (MBG) program scaled back to five days a week in March under fiscal pressure from the Iran war. Over sixteen thousand students were affected by food poisoning incidents through October 2025. The 2026 deficit projects 2.68% against a 3% statutory cap. Same populist-mandate-meets-fiscal-pressure dynamic as Manila, but with a key difference: the institution is corrosive but functioning. The campaign question is whether MBG gets repositioned as “we delivered against the war” or whether it becomes the symbol of overpromise. The framing window closes within sixty days.
The Number That Defines the File 53–0 House Justice Committee vote on probable cause to impeach Sara Duterte. The plenary vote on 4 May determines whether the case goes to the Senate. Source: Philippine House of Representatives, 29 April 2026 Recommended readers: Philippines 2028 hopefuls and their backers · ASEAN-allocated capital · Anyone advising a politician on impeachment optics
| | V. | Africa Antananarivo · Nairobi · Kampala |
Randrianirina Has 18 Months to Convince the Streets He Was Their General The Madagascar playbook (Gen Z plus junior officers) is being studied in three other African capitals right now. The colonel who took the palace has the harder job: keeping the coalition that legitimised him. | Andry Rajoelina was ousted on 12-13 October 2025 after three weeks of Gen Z protests over water and electricity outages. The CAPSAT military unit, which brought him to power in 2009, defected. Rajoelina fled on a French military aircraft. Colonel Michael Randrianirina was inaugurated interim president on 17 October, with elections pledged in eighteen to twenty-four months. The mechanism that removed Rajoelina is now the political problem his successor has to manage.
“The election he eventually wins is the one where Gen Z thinks he was their general.” | ❖ | If We Had Randrianirina's File |
The classic post-coup error is consolidating the institution at the expense of the coalition. The CAPSAT generals around him will tell him to lock down, name a transitional cabinet of loyalists, and run the clock to a managed election. That is how he loses. The Gen Z coalition that legitimized the takeover does not share an electorate with the institution that executed it. He has to keep both, and the only way to do that is to run a campaign starting now, two years before the actual ballot.
The play we would run: empower a Gen Z-led civilian advisory council with theatrical visibility (publicly broadcast meetings, a named spokesperson who is twenty-four years old, weekly progress reports on infrastructure). Three early wins: water access in Antananarivo within ninety days, daily power restoration metric published, mobile internet expansion in three provincial capitals. Run him as the soldier-statesman who answered the streets, not the colonel who took the palace.
The diagnostic shifted for African long-rule regimes. The conventional model said suppress the protests, then reset the narrative. The Madagascar model says junior officers will defect once the legitimacy floor cracks. Ruto in Kenya is publicly daring critics to oust him before 2027, which is a tell. Museveni's January 2026 result will be cosmetic but the post-election period is where the playbook applies; the precedent creates a study case for junior officers in equivalent ranks across the region. Tanzania post-2025 sits adjacent. The continental investor risk premium for long-rule incumbencies is not pricing the second-tier military variable yet. Three to six months from now it will.
The Number That Defines the File 19.2 Median age in Madagascar. The same demographic profile defines Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, where the playbook is now being studied. Source: World Bank Madagascar Country Profile Recommended readers: Africa-allocated capital · Long-rule regime watchers · East Africa government affairs teams
| | Speed Beats Strategy
Each of these files has a clock. Vučić has roughly ninety days. Sánchez has thirty-eight. Marcos is on six weeks. Sudan's contracting window is open now. Randrianirina has eighteen months but needs to start the campaign in week one. The principals who win are the ones moving inside the clock. The principals who lose are running the right strategy on the wrong timeline.
The other through-line: every one of these files has a defensible move that nobody is currently making. Vučić is fighting the wrong message. Sánchez is fighting the wrong frame. Marcos picked the wrong play. Western firms are sequencing Sudan wrong. Randrianirina's instinct will be wrong if he listens to his generals. The campaigns that get run well in 2026 will be the ones where a senior operator put the right move in front of the principal early.
That is the work. That is why we send this.
| | — The Calendar We Are Working — 04 May · Manila | Plenary Impeachment Vote One-third sends Duterte to Senate trial. Senate convenes potentially the same week. The 2028 field is decided here. |
| 31 May · Bogotá | Colombia First Round Cepeda 44.3%. Right-wing consolidation determines the runoff opponent. Valencia is the dangerous draw, not de la Espriella. |
| 01 June · Addis | Ethiopia General Election First general election since the Tigray war. TPLF deregistered. OFC and OLF likely to boycott. Eritrea-Assab tensions live. |
| 07 June · Lima | Peru Runoff Fujimori versus Sánchez. 38-38 dead heat. The continental right wave's diagnostic case. |
| 28 June · Belgrade | Vidovdan: Snap Election Window Vučić's trial balloon. If called, Belgrade is moving fast to outrun the Student List consolidation. |
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| — ❦ — | If You Have a File The conversation is one email away.
TSGCo runs campaigns, government affairs, and market-entry plays in the four regions covered above. We work with candidates, sovereigns, funds, and operating principals where political timing decides outcomes.
| The Global Brief Political Intelligence · Biweekly | |
Published by The Strategy Group Company
Washington, D.C.
© 2026 The Strategy Group Company · tsgco.com
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