[tz] Lebanon DST change internally disputed

Andrea Singletary asinglet at epic.com
Sun Mar 26 17:36:46 UTC 2023


The Lebanese Education Minister issued a statement a few hours ago saying that educational and vocational institutions in the country did spring forward last night and are now operating on summer time: https://www.lbcgroup.tv/news/LBCI-latest-news/694103/Lebanon-news-lbci/en - full statement below (Google Translated to English, apologies for any inaccuracies). Folks high up in the government seem to be saying that the Prime Minister acted outside his legal authority in announcing the DST delay, and that unless the Council of Ministers convenes and votes to formally adopt the DST delay, the nation should operate as if DST began on March 26 as originally anticipated. 

So my question is this: In light of this discussion, what sort of documentation or government action would this group need to decide to release an update reverting the change? What would the impacts of a retroactive update be?  

Thank you,
Andrea Singletary

--

Statement of Abbas Halabi, Lebanon's Minister of Education, on 26 March, 2023:

In light of the great dangers that the country is going through, and given my deep knowledge of the spirit of the heavenly religions that unites the people of the country under the umbrella of love, tolerance and mercy, especially in the time of all-inclusive fasting, I call on all Lebanese to reduce the severity of the media conflict and to refrain from any new decisions such as the one recently taken regarding not changing the clock as usual, which fueled the sectarian discourse in the country, and we were and still are in need of an additional issue of division.

Therefore, we consider that the decision of the Council of Ministers related to the adoption of daylight saving time remains valid unless it is amended in a session of the Council of Ministers, and that daylight saving time in schools, professions and universities remains dependent on the basis of the legitimacy of the decision and the affirmation of the unity of the people of education, so it is not permissible to leave the educational, professional and university institutions at a loss. From her command, and the parents are without guidance as to what hour their children go to schools.

The educational sector is the only remaining model for national unity, and we will not leave it vulnerable to rupture and division. The globe rotates and night and day move according to every country in the world, and the times of prayer, fasting and festivals change according to the sunrise and sunset for any part of the earth. Therefore, I call on everyone, including officials and citizens, temporal and spiritual, to pay attention to the deep wounds of the people for whom bread has become difficult to reach, and let us fear God in our words and positions, and put the supreme national interest and people's issues and needs at the forefront, and return the discussion to its size, away from extremism and exaggerated responses.

If the Council of Ministers convenes and takes a decision amending its previous decision related to daylight saving time, we will be the first to apply it. In the absence of such a decision, daylight saving time remains approved and applied in the educational sector.

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> 
Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2023 5:50 PM
To: Jad Baz <jadbaz at gmail.com>; Rany Hany <rany_hany at riseup.net>
Cc: Time zone mailing list <tz at iana.org>
Subject: Re: [tz] Lebanon DST change internally disputed

On 2023-03-25 15:12, Jad Baz via tz wrote:
> I'm wondering how transactions, meeting times and any sort of dealing 
> with anyone outside Lebanon will take place when, say, one party is on 
> 2023b while the other is still on 2022g

It's a mess indeed. I imagine that most automated clocks in Lebanon switched about 50 minutes ago, following the old rules and ignoring the rule change. And we're seeing many reports of institutions either ignoring the rule change, or maintaining two distinct clocks for different use cases.

To work around some of the TZDB part of the mess, here is what people in Lebanon can do, regardless of which TZDB release is installed.

* To adopt the rule change, use Libyan time (TZ='Africa/Tripoli'). 
Alternatively if you have a POSIX-conforming system you can use TZ='EET-2EEST,M4.3.5/0,M10.5.0/0' instead.

* To ignore the rule change, use Cyprus time (TZ='Asia/Nicosia'), which is close to the old rules (though it changes clocks at 03:00 instead of
00:00 so it won't start working until about two hours and 10 minutes from now. Alternatively if you have POSIX use TZ='EET-2EEST,M3.5.0/0,M10.5.0/0', which doesn't have the early-morning glitch that Cyprus does.

None of these workarounds are good indefinitely; for example, if you want to adopt the rule change, Libya time will stop working on April 21. 
These are only temporary workarounds, intended for use on systems where you don't know the TZDB version.

I hope things settle down soon with a consensus in Lebanon. If the consensus is to keep using the old rules, we'll need a new TZDB release of course.




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