User blog comment:Ygrain/Between the Past and the Future 2: Why Are You Here?/@comment-5287758-20120912153416/@comment-2228120-20120912185748

Frankly: dunno. I only played the games, and I haven't been able to find any datation for Arrival, so I picked the sequence of events the way it went in my playthrough: all the quests first, and finally blow the base. Otherwise, it kinda doesn't make sense to me what Shepard could have meant that he would surrender himself "once this was over" - what was over? The Arrival mission was definitely over, so he would have to surrender to Hackett then and there. The Reapers were nowhere around and the fight didn't even begin, so it couldn't be what he meant. Therefore, I interpreted it as "once the mission against the Collectors, and hereby his cooperation with Cerberus, was over", and at that time, Anderson is still a councillor.

However, as I’m looking at ME:Conviction now, it says “in the aftermath of Arrival”, which I understand as “soon after Arrival”, which would place the event far after the timeframe of ME2 and indeed, Anderson wouldn’t be the Councillor any longer. – In which case, Shepard never blew the relay, since the dutiful boyscout, sorry, Paragon, he is, he still turned himself in immediately after the return from the Suicide Mission - i.e., Anderson still councillor but no charges of genocide. Hm. I'll leave it as it is, for the time being, until - and if - I find out more.