Bankers Roberto Setubal and Pedro Moreira Salles, co-chairs of the board of directors of Itaú Unibanco, and Candido Bracher, former president of the financial institution and now also a member of its board, signed the in defense of democracy that is being organized by the University of São Paulo law school and by entities and representatives of civil society. The "Letter to Brazilians and Brazilians in Defense of the Democratic Rule of Law" will be launched at a meeting at the faculty on August 11, in Pátio das Arcadas, and already has almost 3,000 signatures.
It is a response to the coup threats of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL), and was joined over the weekend by several other businessmen, such as Fabio Barbosa, from Natura, Horacio Lafer Piva, from Klabin, from Su Walter Schalka. The document is also endorsed by artists, jurists and personalities such as Chico Buarque de Holland, singer Arnaldo Antunes, Father Júlio Lancelotti, former soccer player Walter Casagrande, former president of the Central Bank Armínio Fraga, the former governor of Santo Paulo Hartung, economist José Roberto Mendonça de Barros and former president of Credit Suisse in Brazil José Olympio Pereira.
Referring to the elections, the document says that "instead of a civic party, we are going through a moment of immense danger to democratic normality, risk to the institutions of the Republic and insinuations of unchallenged unchained unchained question the smoothness of the electoral process and the State democratic law so hard won by Brazilian society.
Translated by Kiratiana Freelon