San Juan Senator Rubén Uñac was confirmed as the Frente de Todos (FdT) coalition candidate for governor, after his brother, current governor Sergio Uñac, was barred from running for a third term by the Supreme Court. The elections, originally scheduled for May 14 and later suspended due to a ruling from the country’s top court, will be on July 2.
Sergio Uñac himself announced his brother would replace him in a rally in Rivadavia, in western San Juan, where he continued to criticize the Supreme Court’s ruling that barred him from the gubernatorial race on the grounds that it was unconstitutional.
“In the July 2 elections we will have to strengthen San Juan’s provincial autonomy, which has been damaged by a court ruling disconnected from the will of the sanjuaninos,” Uñac said. “We are the victims of an absurd process, foreign to the province and to our interests, that impedes us from having a democratic election and making a free choice in favor of a project that transformed San Juan and made it grow.”
Rubén Uñac will be joined on the ticket by Cristian Andino as deputy governor candidate for Agrupación San Juan, the party within the FdT coalition led by Sergio Uñac. The July 2 election will be only for governor and deputy governor, as the legislative elections were carried out normally on My 14.
The elections in San Juan were halted on May 9 following a court presentation made by opposition coalition Juntos por el Cambio (JxC) member Sergio Guillermo Vallejos Mini calling for the process to he halted on the grounds that Uñac’s candidacy was in violation of the province’s constitution.
The elections were suspended at the time as a precautionary measure, a legal time-out in order to assess the constitutionality of Uñac’s candidacy. Due to the fact the Uñac’s candidacy was the only one under question, San Juan legislative elections were carried out normally on May 14. The Supreme Court ruled on June 1 that the current governor was not eligible to run for a third term.
“There is no doubt that enabling a person to be in the highest positions of power in a province for 16 uninterrupted years imposes an intolerably high cost on the values that the republican system embodies,” the Court said in its 51-page ruling.
-Télam