Lebanon's Attempt to Change Time Zones Causes Chaos
Najib Mikati has served three terms as the Lebanese Prime Minister, most recently since September 2021. Mikati is among Lebanon’s wealthiest men and has previously faced corruption allegations, which he denies. Photo: AFP, via Boston Globe.
Last week, Lebanon experienced life in two time zones – not for geographic reasons (Russia, after all, has 11), but political ones. The politicization of time zones is a long-standing issue. China, for instance, has one time zone (set to Beijing local time) that stretches across five geographic time zones, in order to encourage cohesion with the capital. From 2015 to 2018, North Korea was the only country in the world to use UTC+08:30, in order to distinguish itself from South Korea (UTC+8:00), but it switched back to UTC+8:00 during a period of thawing relations.
Lebanon’s recent experience with two time zones (from March 26 to March 29) was split mainly along religious lines following a public conflict between Prime Minister Najib Mikati and his cabinet. Prime Minister Mikati is a Sunni Muslim, part of a carefully balanced (and often volatile) coalition built in the aftermath of the 1975-1990 civil war. The post-civil war sectarian arrangement splits power between 18 recognized religious communities by picking a Christian president, a Sunni prime minister, and a Shia parliament speaker, but has been criticized for inflaming identity politics and hindering effective policy.
Initially, Lebanon was meant to adopt daylight savings time on March 26, per the standard policy of the last several years. However, adopting daylight savings time during Ramadan would require Lebanese Muslims to fast for a longer period after the end of the work day. Ramadan fasts are timed according to prayers that essentially line up to sunrise and sunset, and thus unaffected by daylight savings, but the convenience of closing businesses for iftar or keeping restaurants open later would change. Prime Minister Mikati thus decided to cancel the daylight savings transition, a change announced on March 26, when the adoption was scheduled to occur. The Maronite Church came out against this decision – indicative of decades of sectarian conflict in Lebanon. On March 27, the government reversed course again, saying it would in fact go ahead with daylight savings, but not until March 29.
The result was several days of chaos. Maronite churches, Christian schools, and affiliated institutions followed daylight savings time, as did the major news channels LCBI and MTV. Middle East Airlines, Lebanon’s national carrier, kept its on-flight and posted clocks to winter time, but moved its flight times forward to keep them standard with the rest of the region. The education minister ordered public schools to switch to daylight savings time, against official government policy.
Omar Tamo, a Lebanese journalist and reporter for Bloomberg, asked on Twitter: “How do I explain to people that Lebanon has two clock timings (one hour apart) and at least 7 exchange rates for its national currency, with the most used rate and clock not officially recognized by the government[?]”
Protestors demonstrating against Lebanon’s increasingly dire economic situation clash with police and security forces in central Beirut, March 22, 2023. Photo: Hussein Malla/ Associated Press via Al-Jazeera.
Lebanon has faced myriad challenges in the past few years, chief among them a significant economic collapse and the devastating Beirut Port Explosion in Aug. 2020. In Feb. of this year, Lebanon devalued its official exchange rate by 90 percent, finally recognizing the catastrophic decline of the Lebanese lira relative to the dollar on the black market since 2019. The actual exchange rate by late March 2023 was about one-eighth the official level.
Limits on bank withdrawals have left even middle-class Lebanese without the cash to go about their daily lives. In a few high-profile cases, people have organized bank robberies in order to withdraw their own savings. The port explosion was the clear result of years of negligence and corruption; it killed more than 200 people and damaged 77,000 apartments and left 300,000 Beirutis homeless. In July 2022, several of the port’s grain silos which had survived the initial explosion with damage caught fire and collapsed, indicative of further unresolved systemic mismanagement.