Mexico City ends dispute by changing its clocks

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Nando Times

MEXICO CITY (May 7, 2001 8:41 a.m. EDT) - Mexico City joined the rest of the country when it switched to daylight-saving time Sunday, ending a dispute between the mayor and President Vicente Fox over who has the power to tell time.

Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had decreed that the capital would refuse to "spring forward" with the rest of Mexico for daylight-saving time.

That immediately turned the clock into a constitutional crisis pitting the leftist mayor against Fox, of the conservative National Action Party.

Lopez Obrador, who is a possible presidential candidate in 2006, insisted that Fox "does not have the power to change the hour."

Fox's office insisted that he did and called Lopez Obrador's decree unconstitutional. Last month, the Supreme Court stepped in and ordered Mexico City to cooperate.

Lopez Obrador grudgingly changed his clock Sunday.

"I'm sorry that you will have to get up earlier," Lopez Obrador told reporters before the time change Sunday.

National health officials issued statements Sunday assuring Mexicans that daylight-saving time is not a health hazard.

But unions representing hundreds of teachers in the southern state of Oaxaca told the government news agency Notimex they will not make the switch in their classrooms.

Imported in 1996 from the United States, the time change - ahead one hour in the spring, then back again in the fall - has yet to win the hearts and minds of Mexicans. Many feel it disrupts their biological clocks. Others complain that it is difficult to get their children up in the dark of the morning or to put them to bed when it's still light out.

Federal officials argue that daylight time saves hundreds of millions of dollars in energy costs and helps coordinate Mexico's companies with their main trading partners in the United States.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), May 07, 2001


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