Wednesday, August 7, 2002

Our forum next week will have a limitation

For the past several weeks, The Citizen has offered free of charge opportunity for local political candidates and their supporters and detractors to present their views in our Letters to the Editor section.

We thank the many individuals and candidates who have availed themselves of the space provided. Last week, for instance, we expanded our Letters section to an unprecedented five pages, including two full pages with nothing but letters on them.

We also thank our readers who have followed the political debates on these pages. We believe that the best government, the most responsive government, is that which is closest to the people. Whatever gap may exist between local officials and local residents should not be for want of opportunity to communicate openly.

With two weeks left before the general primary Aug. 20, The Citizen will continue to provide space for political debate. However, with next Wednesday's edition, we will introduce our usual pre-election fetter: No last-minute, unrefutable charges.

For the sake of fairness, next week's letters will be censored by the editor to exclude any new or previously unaired charges, allegations or issues.

Only those letters or portions of letters that deal with issues or charges raised up until this issue will be printed. We will also print any rebuttals to such charges, allegations or issues next week to issues that may be raised by this week's batch of letters. But no new ones.

The letters printed next week from candidates and supporters and opponents will not contain any "August surprises" from candidates, their supporters or their opponents. We ask our letter writers to observe that limitation.

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