I believe accountability starts with honesty. With consistency. With memory

Dear Editor,
I read Lelon Saul’s recent letter (I call upon the opposition-appointed GECOM commissioners to resign). And then I read it again. Not because it was persuasive, but because something about it lingered. Something I couldn’t shake.
Perhaps it was the tone – heavy with opprobrium and indignation. Or maybe it was the pretence – the pretence that we didn’t just live through the near-collapse of our democracy a mere five years ago.
Lelon writes of fairness, of public trust and institutional failure. All worthy concerns to be sure. But as I read his sermon for the third time, I couldn’t help but wonder: where were his sermons on public trust in 2020, when the foundations of this country were once again being tested in ways that still haunt our collective memories?
I remember those months clearly – this wasn’t 1968, 1973, 1985. This was real. And while many of us raised our voices – ordinary citizens, journalists, community leaders, I don’t recall reading a sermon from Mr. Saul.
That silence matters.
Because principles, if they are real, don’t disappear when they’re inconvenient. They certainly don’t wait in the wings only to reappear when it is politically expedient. Editor, there’s an expression for that – moral inconsistency. It’s when outrage becomes selective and when memory is edited for comfort.
Now, I expect Mr. Saul might respond with more manufactured opprobrium claiming this is some kind of personal attack. That I wish to to discredit him. Let me be clear: this is not a personal attack on Mr. Saul. I merely wish to highlight pattern and timing – the loudness of his voice now, on an administrative matter no less, contrasted with the silence that preceded it. In public life, this analysis is fair game.
At the centre of Mr. Saul’s concern is the non-renewal of GECOM’s legal advisor. He sees it as evidence of bias, perhaps even revenge. But the facts are plainer than that. The legal advisor, acting in a matter before the court, publicly submitted a position contrary to that of his client—GECOM itself. In almost any other legal or professional context, that would be considered a breach of trust. Any employer, especially one as sensitive and scrutinized as GECOM, would have reason to reassess such a relationship.
Mr. Saul writes with conviction. He’s concerned, if you can manage to read past the manufactured indignation, about the non-renewal of the legal advisor’s contract, seeing in it the collapse of GECOM’s credibility. As a Guyanese citizen, those are concerns worth having. But his letter feels disingenuous, especially given the context. In 2020, we watched as GECOM officials aligned with the party he represents attempted to overwrite the results of a national election. Even Bruce Golding, the head of the OAS observer mission, remarked that he had never seen “a more transparent effort to alter the results of an election.” That, too, was a breach of trust—and a far more dangerous one.
So when Mr. Saul writes indignantly of GECOM now, I have to ask—where was this energy when it was truly needed?
None of this is to say GECOM is perfect. No public institution is. But if we are going to speak about reform, about strengthening democracy, then we must be honest about the full story. We must remember the silence. We must hold ourselves to the same standards we ask of others. Anything less is not principle—it’s performance.
So, no—I don’t agree with Mr. Saul. Not because I deny the importance of accountability, but because I believe accountability starts with honesty. With consistency. With memory. We cannot claim to love democracy only when it serves us. We cannot forget the near-crisis of 2020 simply because it is inconvenient to remember. And we cannot pretend that outrage, is the same as moral clarity.
Guyana deserves better. And more importantly, Guyana remembers.

Sincerely,
Alfonso De Armas