Yes, this is exactly what I did to an RHEL5 box two days ago, and it worked fine (with the difference that I hard-linked the file, not soft-linked, but I don't see there should be much difference).
If there is already a localtime file in place it is perhaps best to move the old one aside and put the new one in place in one operation:
cd /etc; mv localtime localtime.orig; ln /usr/share/zoneinfo/EST localtime
Best Answer
That is a program that blocked system call ptrace:
but I found it in the archive with useful programs and did not check availability.