Mônica Bergamo: Financial Times says letter for democracy is the first cohesive response to Bolsonaro’s attacks

The British newspaper Financial Times reported this Wednesday (27) the creation of the “Letter to Brazilians and Brazilians in Defense of the Democratic State of Law”, which will be launched at an event at the USP Law School, in São Paulo, on the August 11th.

Signed by former STF (Federal Supreme Court) ministers, jurists, bankers and artists, the document surpassed the 100,000 signatures mark in less than 24 hours after being opened to the public, as the column showed.

“Executives, public figures and prominent artists in Brazil have launched a campaign in defense of democracy after mounting attacks by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro on the country’s electronic voting system,” reads the Financial Times text in its opening.

The British publication, one of the most prestigious internationally, still claims that the initiative is “the first cohesive response of Brazilian civil society” to President Jair Bolsonaro’s (PL) speech against the honesty of electronic voting machines.

The names of banker Pedro Moreira Salles, co-chairman of the board of directors of Itaú Unibanco, and of the chairman of Standard Bank, Natalia Dias, are highlighted in the text.

Created in the wake of the coup threats by the Chief Executive, the letter was born from a group of former students of the USP Law School who intended to honor the 45th anniversary of the “Letter to Brazilians”, read at the same institution, in Largo de San Francisco in 1977.

“Professor Goffredo da Silva Telles Junior, master of all of us, in the free territory of Largo de São Francisco, read the Letter to Brazilians, in which he denounced the illegitimacy of the then military government and the state of exception in which we lived”, says the text.

The document recalls the overcoming of the military dictatorship (1964-1985), the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution and says that, since then, democracy has matured. But he says that, with this year’s elections, Brazil is going through a moment of immense danger to democratic normality and a risk to institutions.

Of those who have already retired from the highest court in the country, the Federal Supreme Court, sign Carlos Ayres Britto, Carlos Velloso, Celso de Mello, Cezar Peluso, Ellen Gracie, Eros Grau, Joaquim Barbosa, Marco Aurélio Mello, Nelson Jobim, Sepúlveda Pertence and Sydney Sanches.

Former STF minister Celso de Mello would read the document in the Pátio das Arcadas, on August 11, but canceled his participation for health reasons.

The reissue of the “Letter to Brazilians” also brings together names from the financial market such as Arminio Fraga, economist and former president of the Central Bank, Candido Botelho Bracher, former president of Itaú, Claudio Haddad, former president of Insper, José Guimarães Monforte, former chairman of the Board of Directors of BB, and José Olympio Pereira, former chairman of Credit Suisse in Brazil.

_{with BIANKA VIEIRA, KARINA MATIAS and MANOELLA SMITH}