![]() ![]() 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. ![]() 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. “I had an 8am appointment and a 9am class, which will now happen at the same time,” she said. 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. 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. 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. ![]() 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?”Īfter 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. 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. 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. The Mediterranean country normally sets its clocks forward an hour on the last Sunday in March, which aligns with most European countries. 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. ![]()
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