All public holidays can be declared a year ahead
By MUNGAI KIHANYA
The Sunday Nation
Nairobi,
18 September 2016
All the cases scheduled for hearing on Monday 12th September 2016 in any
of the Kenyan courts of law have been postponed till next year! The
reason is that on Friday 9th September, the government
declared that Monday would be a public holiday to celebrate Id-Ul-Adha.
The declaration was a surprise to the majority of citizens because this
important day in the Islamic calendar is normally not a nationwide
holiday in Kenya.
All the cases scheduled to be heard on Monday will now be pushed to the
end of the queue in the court diaries. Since the backlog runs between
six and nine months, nearly all the cases will now be heard in 2017!
This is just one sector of the society that was greatly inconvenienced
the sudden and abrupt declaration of a public holiday.
Now, let me be very clear from the outset: I am not against declaring
religious celebrations as public holidays. My concern is in the manner
that this is done – with very little prior notice.
Now Islamic holidays depend on not only the appearance but also on the
sighting of the moon in the sky. Therefore, it is generally assumed that
it is impossible to tell the exact date when the public holiday should
be set. I disagree with that notion.
Whereas every effort should be made to ensure that the two coincide, the
national public holiday must be declared in ADVANCE. This is always done
a few days ahead. The question I ask is: can’t we get a fairly accurate
prediction of the date of the public holiday a year ahead of time? I
believe we can.
Now, you don’t need any special equipment to study the phases of the
moon to a very high degree of accuracy. Heck! You don’t even need a
clock to get extremely accurate timings! All it takes is long term
observation and counting the number of cycles completed. Then divide the
total number of days by the number of cycles observed.
If the observation is done over a duration of, say, 10 years (3,650
days) the resulting time period of the moon cycle will be accurate to
within one hour! Extend that to 100 years (36,500 days) and the accuracy
improves to plus-or-minus a few minutes.
Using slightly more accurate timing equipment (normal clocks), the
duration of the moon’s cycle has been measured to an accuracy of
plus-or-minus a tenth of a second. With this knowledge, it is possible
to accurately predict the date of any lunar-based holiday many years in
advance. Indeed, I have seen a Saudi-Arabian calendar with prediction of
the dates of Idd-Ul-Fitr for the next 100 years!
With all that in mind, I think the law should be amended to require that
a declaration of a public holiday shall be made at least 12 months in
advance. After all, the next Idd-Ul-Fitr is expected to be on 26th
June 2017. So what are we waiting for? That public holiday can be
declared today!
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