[Gulf News] Prominent defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi yesterday promised to keep up pressure on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whose re-election sparked off Iran's worst unrest since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.Ahmadinejad will be sworn in by parliament today when the authorities will want to avoid any repeat of the street unrest after the disputed June 12 poll in which at least 20 people were killed.
Karroubi, the most liberal of the presidential candidates who lost to Ahmadinejad, was quoted by the Spanish El Pais daily yesterday as saying that he and Mousavi would never capitulate. "Neither Mousavi nor I have withdrawn. We will continue to protest and we will never collaborate with this government. We will not harm it, but we will criticise what it does," Karroubi said in an interview. He added: "Quite honestly, if the authorities had acted in a different way, we would never have had these problems, because the majority of those protesting only did so for that reason."
Mousavi's credentials as a loyal servant of Iran's revolution may help explain why he has escaped arrest for leading protests against the election.