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IRAQ: Iraq’s Communists hope for backlash against religious rule

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Millions of Iraqis are expected to go to polls Saturday in provincial elections seen as a harbinger of things to come in national elections planned later in the year, and one group hoping that voters move away from the religious parties now dominating power are the Communists. The Iraqi Communist Party is running 27 candidates for Baghdad’s 57-seat provincial council, where it currently holds two seats.

Since its formation in 1934, the party has been battered by a succession of authoritarian regimes. Read more about its campaign efforts, particularly those of candidate Abdul Munim Jabbar Hadi shown above campaigning in Baghdad.

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In the meantime, special voting was held across the country Wednesday for security forces, hospital patients and prison inmates. In the northern city of Mosul alone, election officials said there were about 77,000 such voters. In another hotly contested area, the southern city of Basra, there were early complaints from voters in hospitals that they were not able to cast ballots because they had not been given advance notice of the paperwork they would need to offer proof of identity.

Local journalists also reported that Iraqi security forces hit some reporters who showed up at special voting sites to cover balloting.

-- Tina Susman in Baghdad

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