The saga of the energy-efficient light bulbs has been running as a lead story in the mainstream media for a week now, defying conventional wisdom that no sensational story, no matter how earth-shattering, could go beyond the three-day benchmark. The rule of thumb is that every story has a short life cycle and once it expires it will be consigned to history and forgotten.
But, this case is just not that simple. Apparently, a number of media people have a preset agenda and will play up the story in whichever way they want regardless of the facts. So, it will not be surprising that this little light bulb story will continue to dominate news pages for a much longer period.
We can break down the strategic process of this media-led 'light-bulb campaign' into three stages to analyse how it managed to evolve into a major scandal. First, they had to dress it up as a huge expos?by focusing on the assumption that the voucher scheme for the purchase of energy-efficient light bulbs proposed by Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen was premeditated to benefit his son's father-in-law, said to have run a company representing the largest supplier of light bulbs in Hong Kong.
This, however, was later disproved in press reports that showed that even though Philips commands a considerable market share of the energy-efficient light bulb market, Anthony Mok Kam-tsuen's company is not the sole local distributor. The company also deals substantially in incandescent light bulbs besides Philips lighting products.
Furthermore, Mok retired some time ago after selling 70 per cent of his company shares to a French conglomerate. The remaining 30 per cent shares are held by his son. The fact is the scheme would bring little pecuniary benefits to the Mok family.
Still, the media insisted Tsang should have declared this at the very outset which would have spared his in-laws the embarrassment.
The second stage was to focus on the point that Tsang failed to declare a possible conflict of interest, which showed that the administration lacked political wisdom. But, according to Executive Council rules, the chief executive does not have to declare under these circumstances as the existing mechanism concerning the declaration of interests by officials does not apply to relatives by affinity.
