Samoans hop into future, 1st to greet 2012

APIA, Samoa—The New Year’s Eve parties started a whole day early on the South Pacific island nation of Samoa, after a hop across the international date line transported the country 24 hours into the future—making it the first in the world to ring in the new year.

Samoans began celebrating under a rainbow of fireworks at the stroke of midnight on Thursday, December 29—when the country skipped over Friday and moved straight into 12:01 a.m. on December 31.

Samoa and neighboring Tokelau lie near the date line that zigzags vertically through the Pacific Ocean, and both sets of islands decided to realign themselves this year from the Americas side of the line to the Asia side, to be more in tune with key trading partners.

Appreciating change

The time-jump revelry in Samoa continued throughout Saturday as the hours ticked down to 2012. Pools and beaches across the capital Apia were packed with Samoans and tourists celebrating the country’s sudden position as the first in the world to ring in the new year, rather than the last.

Despite the extended festivities, Samoan police said there had been no reports of any problems.

“More than 90 percent of our people really appreciate the change, and that contributes to its success,” said one official who could not be named as he was not authorized to speak publicly.

The time change, officially decided in June, was meant to align Samoa with its Asian trading partners; it moves the islands’ work days further from the United States, which dominated its economy in the past.

Still paid on Friday

In this giant-step version of daylight saving time, the island’s 186,000 citizens, and the 1,500 who live in Tokelau, went to sleep on Thursday and woke up on Saturday. The government has decreed that those who miss a day of work on Friday will be paid all the same.

Samoa—about 8,000 kilometers southeast of Manila—has been out of alignment with its Asian-Pacific neighbors since 1892, when American traders persuaded it in 1892 to shift from the western side to the eastern side of the international date line to facilitate business with the West Coast of the United States.

That earlier shift took place on the American Independence Day—so the Samoans could celebrate July 4 twice.

The new time zone put Samoa three hours ahead of eastern Australia rather than 21 hours behind it, and 22 hours ahead of California, instead of two hours behind it.

More business

The Prime Minister of Samoa, Tuila’epa Sailele Malielegaoi, acknowledged the new distance from the American orbit but said the move would make it much easier to do business with Australia and New Zealand, whose economies are linked increasingly with the rest of Asia, particularly China.

“In doing business with New Zealand and Australia, we’re losing out on two working days a week,” Tuila’epa said. “While it’s Friday here, it’s Saturday in New Zealand, and when we’re at church on Sunday, they’re already conducting business in Sydney and Brisbane.”

“Today,” the statement said bluntly, “we do a lot more business with New Zealand and Australia, China and Pacific Rim countries such as Singapore.”

Two years ago Samoa took a step to align itself with Australia and New Zealand, putting drivers on the left side of the road rather than the right. The prime minister said the change would make it easier for Samoans in those neighboring nations to send used cars home to their relatives.

Free for all

Shifting time by decree is not a new phenomenon in the Pacific. At the recent turn of the century, in a bid to be the first to greet the dawn in what was called the new millennium, Pacific island nations engaged in a free-for-all of shifting time zones, date lines and daylight saving times.

The date line, created at an international convention in 1884, is an imaginary line drawn roughly north to south along the 180-degree meridian, zigging and zagging here and there to accommodate the needs and demands of the nations along its route.

Moving westward across the date line, a traveler loses a day, moving to a point where it is 24 hours later. Moving eastward, a day is gained.

As the year 2000 approached, the island nation of Kiribati (32 atolls and one coral island) unilaterally extended the date line in a 1,600-km loop to embrace its easternmost outcropping, Caroline Island. Tonga and Fiji introduced daylight saving time to move their clocks an hour ahead.

Economic realities

“There seems to be no legal reason why any country cannot declare itself to be in whatever time zone it likes,” said the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, the international arbiter of official time, in a premillennium statement.

The Samoan prime minister insisted that this week’s hop across the date line was prompted solely by economic realities and that it had nothing to do with a bid to be the first place in the world to greet the new year in 2012.

American Samoa, about 125 km to the east of Samoa, is not making the switch. AP, New York Times