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By Euan Paulo C. Añonuevo, Reporter
The Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) pushed through
with the election of its board members despite stiff resistance from
the chief of the state pension fund who had moved but failed to stop
the proceedings.
In a grinding stockholders’ meeting on Tuesday
that stretched from morning till evening at the Meralco Theater in
the company’s compound on Ortigas Avenue in Pasig City, the
Lopez-controlled Meralco board rejected an order from the Securities
and Exchange Commission (SEC) that sought to restrain it from
counting proxy votes solicited on its behalf.
The SEC issued the order after Garcia questioned
the authority of Anthony Rosete to perform the functions of
Meralco’s corporate secretary and asked the commission to
supervise the meeting.
Rosete, who replaced Justice Jose Vitug who
resigned from his post in the Meralco board recently, validated
Meralco shareholders’ proxy votes that would add up to the voting
rights to whoever such votes were assigned to.
He said the board “deemed the SEC order null
and void” after they found that it lacked basic requirements
necessary for such petition.
Among others, Rosete added, the order does not
have any docket number; was undated; does not bear the seal of the
SEC; was signed by only one commissioner; and was served without
notice.
The board’s motion to proceed with the
election of its new members, which was not yet finished as of press
time, was met with stiff opposition from Garcia and other GSIS
representatives present in the stockholders’ meeting.
The Meralco Theater, which has a seating
capacity of more than a thousand, was filled to the brim as a number
of Meralco shareholders from all walks of life—from housewives,
ordinary workers, businessmen and company employees up to some of
the country’s top executives —trooped to the meeting in a strong
show of support for the embattled management of Meralco.
Inside and out, the Meralco compound was swamped
by the utility’s shareholders.
Garcia, who holds the proxy votes of government
financial institutions, has been calling for a change in Meralco
management.
He said he will file a complaint with the SEC to
invalidate the stockholders’ meeting and the election that was
held to fill the 11-member Meralco board. Garcia added that he will
move for the commission to cite responsible Meralco officials in
contempt.
Government financial institutions have about the
same number of shareholdings in the country’s largest electric
utility as the Lopez Group. The SEC order would have given them the
upper hand in the board’s ballots.
Garcia said the Meralco board took the law into
its own hands when it defied the restraining order. He then asked
Rosete “to stay out” of the proceedings, which only drew a stoic
response from the latter.
The GSIS chief’s statement, however, drew loud
protests from the predominantly Lopez crowd who heckled and jeered
him through most of the meeting.
The state pension fund’s head, who sits in the
Meralco board on the strength of GSIS’ 22.05-percent stake in the
company, castigated the crowd a number of times but this only fed
more fuel to the already simmering atmosphere at the meeting.
“Meralco employees are not taught good
manners. They have forgotten civility,” Garcia said, addressing
the crowd head-on, eliciting further negative reactions.
Garcia had to plead several times to the
shareholders present in the stockholders’ meeting whom he all
accused of being employees of Meralco so he can address the board.
But, apparently fed up with Garcia’s
pronouncements at the meeting, Richard Tantoco, an official of the
Lopez Group’s power generating unit First Gen Corp., stood up
suddenly out of nowhere to say, “I am not an employee of Meralco.”
Other shareholders started to follow suit and
stood as one declaring the same statement with conviction —drawing
a wild round of applause from the crowd.
Even non-Lopez and non-Meralco affiliated
shareholders voiced their support for the Meralco management, with a
number of them interviewed by reporters on the sidelines of the
meeting expressing disgust with the plummeting value of Meralco
shares brought about by Garcia’s crusade against the company’s
officials.
Garcia has been publicly lambasting the current
Lopez-controlled management of Meralco for alleged
“mismanagement” and “onerous transactions” with its other
companies.
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