VENEZUELA:President Hugo Chavez does not usually do things by half but yesterday was an exception: he put Venezuela's clocks back half an hour. By presidential decree, the country stepped back in time 30 minutes in a one-off adjustment to its relationship with Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
It would put Venezuelans biologically more in tune with the sun, Mr Chavez said. "It's about the metabolic effect, where the human brain is conditioned by sunlight." The adjustment was widely seen as a quixotic initiative of a leader who seems to want to change everything.
"Loco," said Antonio Machado, a newspaper vendor in Caracas, tapping his head. "Mad. I don't see it doing much harm, but what's the point?" Much the same was said when Mr Chavez ordered the horse on the national flag to face left instead of right to reflect his socialist orientation.
He also renamed the country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela after the independence hero Simon Bolivar.
Next month, the currency, the bolivar, will lose three zeros and be renamed the Bolivar fuerte, the strong Bolivar.
Some scientists endorsed the time change as rational, given that Venezuela's Caribbean coast was wide enough for two time zones. A handful of other countries, including India, Afghanistan and Iran, have 30-minute variations from GMT. Nepal's is 15 minutes.
"You're going to see the impact, especially children in school," Mr Chavez said recently on his TV show, Alo Presidente. "Why? So that our bodies and, above all, our children take better advantage of sunlight and adapt the biological clock."
The government had been studying the change since it was proposed in 1999, Mr Chavez added. "I don't care if they call me crazy, the new time will go ahead. I'm not to blame. I received a recommendation and said I liked the idea."
Its credibility was dented by the president and his brother Adan, a physicist-turned-education minister, mistakenly saying on TV that clocks would go forward rather than back.
Efforts to rush the change through in August were postponed three times because of technical difficulties. Venezuela was 4½ hours behind GMT until 1965 when the 30-minute variation was dropped for convenience.