I've avoided blogging about Chavez for a long time-- most everybody know that Fidel Jr. is well on his way to establishing the newest socialist dictatorship and there doesn't seem to be a whole lot that anybody (much less rational Venezuelan voters) can do about it. But the latest news (reported by the New York Times) is giving some indication that Chavez may be going off the deep end. On his regular Sunday television show, in what several other news reports referred to as a “rambling” address, Chávez unveiled his plans to move Venezuela's clocks ahead by half an hour.
Reaction was swift, with many people recalling the scene in Woody Allen’s “Bananas” when a revolutionary hero becomes president of a Latin American country and announces that from now on, “underwear will be worn on the outside.”
In his speech, Chávez connected the time change to his plan to reduce the Venezuelan work day in 2008. His administration believes that cutting everyone’s work day to six hours will increase national productivity and that by move the clocks ahead a half hour will create a “metabolic effect, where the human brain is conditioned by sunlight.”
Hugo appeared on TV with his science minister, who later said the Venezuelan government wants to return the country to the system it used before 1965-- when it was changed for convenience.
If Hugo follows through with his plan, Venezuela will join only a few other countries who use the half-hour system--Burma, Afghanistan, Nepal, and the Canadian province Newfoundland.
Riordan Roett, the director of the Western Hemisphere studies program at Johns Hopkins University, says that the fact that the president of Venezuela announces something does not necessarily mean it’s a done deal. “See if Chávez repeats it,” he advised. “If it’s just a one-time thing, the rational people who are still in the government will just ignore it.”
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