On Tuesday, May 9, the Supreme Court issued two measures precautionary where, 5 days before the provincial elections, he suspends the elections in San Juan and Tucuman. The decision, which does not necessarily imply challenging the candidacies presented by the Frente de Todos, was made after the judicial presentation of opposition political parties from both provinces who said that the candidacies of Manzur and Uñac violated the republican system of government that the provinces swore to preserve.
Manzur He was deputy governor of Alperovich between 2007 and 2015 (two terms) after which he presented himself to be the same governor, a position which he also re-elected. In this way, Manzur celebrates 16 years in a row in the positions of Governor and Lieutenant Governor. The Constitution of Tucumán expressly enables the possibility for the lieutenant governor to become governor and be re-elected, but is silent on whether the current governor, after his two terms, can run again as Lieutenant Governor. This is precisely what Manzur intends to do, with the agreement of the Tucuman Justice.
In San Juan the situation is relatively similar. One C he was lieutenant governor between 2011 and 2015. After that period he held the position of governor consecutively between 2015 and 2023. In this year the governor presented his ballot to aspire to a third term as governor of San Juan. The San Juan Constitution establishes that the Governor can “be consecutively re-elected up to two times.” When speaking of re-election and non-election, the ruling party ensures that a person can validly be elected to the office of Governor for one term and then be “re-elected” twice. That would be the case of Uñac.
The National Constitution, like other federal constitutions, recognizes the prerogative of the provinces to write their provincial constitution and to organize their power structure according to what their community decides. The limit to this broad autonomy is that the provincial constitutions must respect the principles of the National Constitution and must ensure the representative and republican system of governmentaccording to article 5.
Historically, the Supreme Court has always refused to resolve conflicts where respect for the republican form of government at the subnational level was at stake, arguing that they were political and that, therefore, their resolution should be left to the political powers, that is, the Executive and the Legislative. This jurisprudence, which allowed many institutional abuses at the provincial level, changed in 2013 when in a precautionary measure that involved the current Governor of Santiago del Estero Gerardo Zamoraalso suspended the holding of the elections 5 days after it was held.
In that case there was a clear violation of the text of the provincial constitution that expressly prevented the Governor from running for a third term. Given these circumstances, the Court held that Article 5 of the Constitution allowed it to support the republican form of government, that this was a precondition of provincial autonomy, and that Zamora’s candidacy violated this clause.
He standard set in the case of Santiago del Estero It meant an advance in democratic terms, since it set limits to what the governors could do under the protection of provincial autonomy. However, it is an insufficient standard to stop many of the legal strategies used to perpetuate themselves in power. The criterion of unequivocal departure from the text of the local Constitution allows, as in the cases of San Juan and Tucuman, to use the interstices left open in those constitutions.
There were other similar interventions that invalidated the candidacies of other governors from different political parties. In this way, the candidacy of Weretilnek (Black river) and Houses (The Rioja) were invalidated for violating the republican form of government. In fact, who filed the lawsuit against Weretilnek was precisely the current Minister of Justice, Soria.
The resolution on the Deep inside the affair It is a subject of legal complexity. It is not clear that both candidacies are invalid under provincial law. This is so because of the vagueness and silence of the provincial constitutions in question. The Court has two options, one more appropriate than the other. One would be to force the interpretation according to which the local constitutions are clear and the presentations for a new mandate by Uñac and Manzur violate their mandates. This option is, at least, doubtful.
Another option could be for the Court to argue that what violates the republican principle is not the contradiction with local law but some of the possible consequences of itsuch as the indefinite presence of a figure in the government binomial, alternating between the position of Governor and Vice. If he chose this path, he would have to choose to understand republicanism no longer as respect for provincial law, but in a much more robust way. Although the court already flirted with this idea in La Rioja, it never made its departure from what was said in Santiago del Estero explicit.
If the Court decided that Uñac’s three consecutive elections or Manzur’s sustained presence in the government binomial violate the republican principle, the effect of this decision would go far beyond these provinces. Other provinces, such as Formosa or Santa Cruz, could be attacked for the same reason, since their constitutions allow indefinite re-election. If this strategy is adopted, the Court would abandon the standard of deference to provincial political authorities and would take an active role in purifying the channels of political change at the subnational level. This would imply assuming the effect of perpetuation in power by the rulers and how this erodes local political competition.
The Court is thus faced with a series of dilemmas ranging from the interpretation of its own jurisprudence to the possible consequences of its decision, going through the different ways of understanding republicanism. The way in which he resolves the cases of San Juan and Tucumán will depend on how he conjugates the answers to these dilemmas that, far from being inconsequential, are at the heart of the functioning of our federal system.
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