The form of government you have imposes a time limit before your consul can be reelected. E.g. "Consul cannot be reelected for 10 years", or something like that. If a guy is still not getting reelected after that time has passed, it could simply be that the political situation changed a lot within that time. Consider how rare it is for a US President to be reelected after failing to be reelected as the incumbent; it only happened once (Grover Cleveland).