Iraq 's Sunni Arabs voted solidly against the Constitution not because they are Saddam Hussein loyalists , nor because they hate the Kurds and Shiites -LRB- as some of the insurgents do -RRB- ; they voted against it because by doing away with the central state , which they had championed during the previous 80 years , and penalizing them for living in regions without oil , the Constitution became a punitive document -- one that began to seem as if it was written to punish them for the sins of the Baath .