An electoral process in Iraq

Jonathan Steele has a report in today's Guardian on voting going on, at town council level, in a Shia province of Iraq:

The poll was the latest in a series which this overwhelmingly Shia province has held in the past six weeks, and the results have been surprising. Seventeen towns have voted, and in almost every case secular independents and representatives of non-religious parties did better than the Islamists.
.....
In Shatra, a town of 250,000, the Communist party won four seats and independents seven. Partly because of their popularity for stopping the looting which followed the overthrow of the old regime, the Islamists had a majority in the former council which was appointed last summer. After the election they were cut back to four seats out of 15.

"It was not a surprise," said Jalil Abed Jafar, a doctor, in the Communist party's upstairs offices along the waterfront. Shatra is where the party was founded 70 years ago, and the offices were still full of posters celebrating that event, along with photographs of dozens of members executed by the former regime.

Steele goes on to describe the mechanics of this electoral process.