Lebanon daylight savings delay puts country in two time zones at once

Lebanon woke up in two time zones on Sunday after the government’s last-minute decision to delay daylight savings until the end of Ramadan resulted in mass confusion.

Caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati decided on Thursday to postpone the clock changes to 20 April instead of Sunday as planned.

Although no reason was given for the decision, it was seen as an attempt to score a win among Muslims by allowing those fasting during the Muslim holy month to break their fasts an hour earlier, at around 6pm instead of 7pm.

But Lebanon’s influential Maronite church said it would disobey the decision, calling it “surprising” and saying there had been no consultations or considerations of international standards.

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 Beirut airport between Sunday and 21 April would be advanced by an hour.

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The country’s two mobile phone networks sent messages asking users 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 as previously scheduled.

Two of Lebanon’s main news channels LBCI and MTV announced they would disobey the ruling because of the need to work within international schedules. LBCI said in a statement: “Lebanon is not an island.”

Even some public agencies refused to comply. Education minister Abbas Halabi said in a statement the decision was not legally valid because it had not been taken in a meeting of the cabinet.

Soha Yazbek, a professor at the American University of Beirut, is among many parents who have found themselves and their children now bound to different schedules. “So now I drop my kids to school at 8am but arrive at work 42km away at 7:30 am and then I leave work at 5pm but I arrive home an hour later at 7pm!" he tweeted.

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Haruka Naito, a Japanese worker living in Beirut, discovered she has to be in two places at the same time on Monday morning.

The confusion has led to jokes about “Muslim time” and “Christian time” while different internet search engines came up with different results early Sunday morning when queried about the current time in Lebanon.

Lebanon is in the midst of the worst financial crisis in its modern history. Three quarters of the population lives in poverty and IMF officials recently warned the country could be headed for hyperinflation if no action is taken. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of President Michel Aoun ended in late October as the parliament has failed to elect a replacement since.

Some Twitter users shared an old recording of Lebanese composer and musician Ziad Rahbani about the country’s politicians. "Each year, you put the clock forward an hour and you keep us back 10 years.”