However, making him have just recently become the prefect would have deprived them of a lot of good story possibilities, and for no particularly good reason.
Someone would have to check the images to make sure, but didn't he have different forehead appliance designs for each appearance? That's enough to say they're different characters, at least where Klingons are concerned. After all, Charles Cooper played both General Korrd and Supreme Commander K'mPec. No one ever said they were the same character, and the different forehead appliances make it obvious they're not, even discounting that one was in a TOS movie and the other on TNG. And I know Memory Alpha calls K'mPec the Klingon Chancellor. TNG/DS9 only started using that because that's what Gorkon was called in TUC. In Sins of the Father and Reunion, which were made first, K'mPec was called Supreme Commander. Almost like the Supreme Commander position absorbed the Chancellor position at some point, and swiped the title.
^After checking, there are slight differences, and Lursa and Bator have the same forheads that they had in Redemption. It might not be him after all. I never said anything was wrong with it, it just would have connected the series a bit more in my opinion.
Actually, Chancellor is first used in Redemption Part 1, which predates TUC by six months. Or it could have created Small Universe Syndrome.