The groundswell of support against the shortlisting process include three former PSE chairpersons, Harry Liu, Trinidad Kalaw and Felipe Yap. Liu and Kalaw said the shortlisting of four PSE directors is unfair as they hit at the meddling of PSE affairs which is supposed to be a self-regulatory organization.
Stockbroker Irving Ackermann, who is allied with the camp of PSE chairperson Vivian Yuchengco, also echoed the position that "PSE must maintain its status as SRO, and the SEC should respect that."
Former SEC Chairperson Rosario N. Lopez also lambasted the shortlisting as she echoed Bernas’s assertion that "administrative rules can never violate explicit provisions of statues."
Lopez said "shortlisting is nowhere to be found in the Corporation Code of the Philippines which provides in an explicit manner for the conduct of election of the board of directors of any corporation including the Philippine Stock Exchange. No administrative rules or any rule for that matter may amend, revise or repeat the Corporation Code which is a piece of legislation. Time and again, it must be consistently said that the rules cannot amend the law," Lopez added.
Newspaper publisher Napoleon Rama, an independent director candidate and one of those qualified earlier by the PSE Nominations and Elections Committee (Nomelec) but was eventually discarded to give way to the four incumbent-appointees, had already filed a legal suit against the Nomelec, questioning the legality of Circular 16, with Regional Trial Court Branch 158 under Executive Judge Jose Hernandez.
Rama declared that "The actuation of the majority of the PSE Nomelec to limit the number of nominees for independent directors is a blatant infringement of the stockbrokers’ right to vote and anathema to the concept of election."
The grumbling over the shortlisting of PSE directors is threatening to explode in a major crisis for the PSE at a time credibility is of vital import to the institution as even in the SEC itself there is dissension with SEC associate commissioner Jesus Martinez objecting to the provision.