Sell, Sell, Sell!

So Iraq's Shiites and Kurds have presented a draft Iraqi constitution for ratification by referendum, giving up on the idea of reaching a consensus with themost hardline Sunni negotiators. As analysts try to work out whether the three Sunni-majority provinces will vote against the constitution with the two-thirds majority necessary to reject it, Kurdish and Shiite Iraqi politicians have been justifying their abandonment of the Sunnis, or at least those Sunnis who wouldn't compromise on autonomy for the regions and de-Baathification. This is an error on their parts.

Voters' views on the constitution are being formed now; these politicians should be putting all their effort into selling the constitution to Iraq's Sunnis, given that the support of their own electorates is all but assured. Otherwise a rather predictable path may well emerge: Sunni voters feel slighted by the sidelining of their leaders (or at least some of them), and reject the constitution for this reason alone. Need I draw a parallel to the EU constitution? The French and Dutch rejections were hardly based on rational perusals of the text, were they? Indeed, although the Iraqi constitution is shorter and easier to read for literate Iraqis than the EU text is for their counterparts, it's still too much to ask for voters to rationally read the text and make up their own minds. No - they will listen to their leaders, who feel slighted, and will judge the text purely by this measure.

So Iraq's Kurdish and Shiite leaders should not merely ask Iraqi's population to read the text, as they have been doing. Instead, they must address the arguments of Sunni politicians, rebuffing them in a way that will appeal to the Sunni majority. Instead of focusing on the best aspects of the constitution, and on the need for any constitution to kick-start the country, as instinct dictates, they should address the Sunnis' complaints, arguing, for example, that autonomy for Kurds and Shiites also means autonomy for the Sunnis, and that the alternative would essentially be rule by the Shiites (and Kurds) in Iraq's parliament. The more realistic fears of losing oil revenues to the potential autonomous Shiite region should be addressed directly, with assurances or even an amendment of the constitution to give the Suunis a fair slice of the pie. The time for a strong, focused debate is now - otherwise Sunni voters could turn against the constitution and form a no-surrender attitude that would become entrenched over time.