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The Lebanese government’s last-minute decision to delay the start of daylight savings time by a month until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan has resulted in mass confusion.
With some institutions implementing the change while others refused, many Lebanese have found themselves in the position of juggling work and school schedules in different time zones – in the same small country.
In some cases, the debate took on a sectarian nature, with many Christian politicians and institutions, including the largest church, the Maronite church, rejecting the move.
The Mediterranean country normally sets its clocks forward an hour on the last Sunday in March, which aligns with most European countries.
However, on Thursday Lebanon’s government announced a decision by the caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, to push the start of daylight savings to 21 April.
No reason was given for the decision, but a video of a meeting between Mikati and the parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, leaked to local media showed Berri asking Mikati to postpone the implementation of daylight savings time to allow Muslims to break their Ramadan fast an hour earlier.
Mikati responds that he had made a similar proposal but goes on to say that implementing the change would be difficult as it would cause problems in airline flight schedules, to which Berri responds: “What flights?”
After the postponement of daylight savings was announced, Lebanon’s state airline, Middle East Airlines, said the departure times of all flights scheduled to leave from the Beirut airport between Sunday and 21 April would be advanced by an hour.
The country’s two mobile phone networks sent messages to people asking them to change the settings of their clocks to manual instead of automatic in order for the time not to change at midnight, although in many cases the time advanced anyway.
While public institutions, in theory, are bound by the government’s decision, many private institutions, including TV stations, schools and businesses, announced that they would ignore the decision and move to daylight savings on Sunday as previously scheduled.
Haruka Naito, a Japanese non-governmental organisation worker living in Beirut, discovered she has to be in two places at the same time on Monday morning.
“I had an 8am appointment and a 9am class, which will now happen at the same time,” she said. The 8am appointment for her residency paperwork is with a government agency following the official time, while her 9am Arabic class is with an institute that is expected to make the switch to daylight savings.
The schism has led to jokes about “Muslim time” and “Christian time”, while different internet search engines came up with different results early on Sunday morning when queried about the current time in Lebanon.
While in many cases, the schism broke down along sectarian lines, some Muslims also objected to the change and pointed out that fasting was supposed to begin at dawn and end at sunset regardless of time zone.
Many saw the issue as a distraction from the country’s larger economic and political problems.
Lebanon is in the midst of the worst financial crisis in its modern history. IMF officials recently warned the country could be heading for hyperinflation if no action was taken. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Aoun ended in late October as the parliament has failed to elect a replacement since.
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