But it may not matter to the president, who seems keen to turn back the hands of time to an era of absolute dictatorship, when the country was awash with spies spilling its citizens' secrets to keep them in tow and a dictator at the helm.
BBC: African viewpoint: Is Malawi reverting to dictatorship?
Those of the Michael Moore strain of liberalism want to turn back the hands of time so that we can go back to living in 1950s suburban Michigan.
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In his book, Make It In America: The Case for Re-Inventing the Economy, Dow Chemical Company CEO Andrew Liveris calls us to turn back the clock and return to a time when America was defined by the things it built.
Some residents in Dorset are calling on the county council to turn street lights back on at night time claiming the current switch-off is "dangerous".
Police officers were first to arrive on the scene at 21:40, but only had time to turn back one of the Coastguard teams before the others arrived moments later.
At bottom it is a bid to turn back the clock to the time when Labour seemed capable of being a force for meaningful change.
Now is not the time for UMNO to turn its back on this approach.
The gingerbread figures surrounding the house turn back into the little children they once were and Hansel and Gretel's parents arrive just in time to celebrate the children's freedom, and the Witch's demise.
Although it would be a great thing to be able to step out of time and read a book and then turn the clock back on and design its cover, in reality, it probably works better this way.
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The iPS cells, which have many of the same basic properties, do not raise the same ethical questions as embryonic stem cells because they come from skin or now fat cells that have been reprogrammed to go back in time, so to speak, and have the ability to turn into any other kind of cell in the body.
"Even if this is a challenging economic time, it's difficult to understand the agency's decision to turn its back completely on the requirements of the Language Act, " she said.
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