+# From Reuters (2001-09-04): +# Mexico's Supreme Court on Tuesday declared that daylight savings was +# unconstitutional in Mexico City, creating the possibility the +# capital will be in a different time zone from the rest of the nation +# next year.... The Supreme Court's ruling takes effect at 2:00 +# a.m. (0800 GMT) on Sept. 30, when Mexico is scheduled to revert to +# standard time. "This is so residents of the Federal District are not +# subject to unexpected time changes," a statement from the court said. + * Mexico's Supreme Court has declared that daylight savings is unconstitutional in Mexico City. For now, we'll assume that Mexico City will not observe DST next year. Quite possibly this will change. (Thanks to Scott Harrington for this.) ========================================================= Above a couple of quotes from Paul Eggert's last mail. As a resident of Mexico I would like to clarify a couple of points. I happen to believe that most likely Mexico will still apply daylight saving next year, despite public protests, but this is my personal opinion and remains to be seen. However, I strongly believe Reuter's interpretation of the Supreme Court case to be incorrect and pretentious. It says that "daylight savings is unconstitutional in Mexico City". The court said no such thing. It made two separate rulings where one handled the decree from Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador which stated that Mexico City should *not* observe DST, and a decree from mexican president Vicente Fox that defined DST rules in all of the Republic. In both cases it deemed the decrees (not DST itself) unconstitutional. There is a big difference. It would be like if the president had put an extra tax on chewing gum, and a court rule had said that he had no authority to do so, then the conclusion would be that all taxes have been deemed unconstitutional by the court?!?! The clear result of the Supreme Court rulings is that DST and time zones are a matter under the authority of the Congress (Congreso de la Unión). Since they have not yet (as far as I know) spoken about this issue, we don't know which way they are leaning. Because of the documented savings in electricity I think they are more likely to continue DST, but that is for them to say, not for me. The Reuter article continues "... creating the possibility the capital will be in a different time zone from the rest of the nation next year.... ". This is really how the devil reads the bible. How can the change from nation-wide authority of setting DST rules from the president to the congress effect that suddenly the capital will be in a different time zone from the rest of Mexico? While the congress may decide to change current rules I think it is extremely unlikely that they will make rules that will make Mexico City different to the rest of Mexico, since nobody wants that solution, not even the most fundamentalist DST opposers. For the tz database I don't really care how we put this at the moment. I am sure we will get a congress decision before first Sunday of May 2002 when DST would start again if we stick to the old presidential rule. Regards, Jesper Nørgaard Welen Email: jnorgard@Prodigy.Net.mx Project Leader (Líder de Proyecto) Software CIMMYT - Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo Dirección: CIMMYT Int. c/o Jesper Nørgaard Km. 45, Carretera México-Veracruz El Batán Texcoco, Edo. de México CP 56130 MEXICO Tel.: +52 (5) 58-04-20-04 ext. 1374 Fax: +52 (5) 58-04-75-58 Tel. Casa: 53-10-05-95 ó 53-10-97-78 CIMMYT home page: http://cimmyt.cgiar.org Check out my free program World Time Explorer: http://www20.Brinkster.com/timezone50/index.htm http://tz.freewebsites.com/index.htm