Willard Phelps' proposed big-tent political party is already coming apart at the seams as the former energy corporation director has expunged two would-be collaborators; one from the fledgling party's inner circle and a second from the planning committee for the party's founding convention.

Last week, Don Roberts and Mike McLarnon – two of three former Liberal MLAs who jumped ship in 2002 from Pat Duncan's short-lived majority government and last year became enthusiastic supporters of Phelps' return to politics – were informed by Phelps that their services are no longer required.

"I will not work with people who have hidden agendas,” Phelps said Thursday afternoon of the reason he booted the pair from two committees of the United Citizens Group, currently a working title for the new political entity.

"(McLarnon) blindsided me. He never brought any ideas about the constitution to that (planning) committee, but waited until after my (April 15) press conference ... using my thing for him,” Phelps told the Star.

One challenge he has had is differentiating his proposed party from the competition. McLarnon thinks his idea – that party members have the power to select a cabinet in the event the venture forms a government – could help achieve that.

While McLarnon said he planned to propose such amendments at the party's founding convention, slated for June 5 inWhitehorse, Phelps wants nothing to do with the idea nor McLarnon.

"I took my honours in political philosophy ... democracy is government for the people by the people,” Phelps said.

"For the people by the party is a totalitarian state. That's what they do in communist China; Russia did it,” Phelps said.

"Those ideas of Mike's are a giant step away from what I believe in and what people died in wars for.”

As for Roberts, who was part of what he describes as the United Citizens' "core group” of brains and cash behind the enterprise, Phelps is accusing the former Health minister of usurping the party's focus for a different agenda.

"It's a group of people trying to get a party started with core values. It wasn't anybody's intention from the outset to push electoral reform,” insisted Phelps.

The former Conservative government leader made news last June when he and three other directors quit the Yukon Energy Corporation's board to protest Premier Dennis Fentie's designs to privatize the public utility in a deal with Calgary-based ATCO. Since then, the 68-year-old Phelps has been on a campaign to remove Fentie from power.

In October 2009, he commissioned a poll that Roberts helped pay for. The results indicated two out of three respondents were dissatisfied with the ruling Yukon Party and its opposition Liberal and New Democratic Party counterparts.

Last November, more than 100 people turned out to a public meeting at the Gold Rush Inn to hear Phelps' pitch for a new political party in the territory.

Touting the proposed party as all-inclusive, regardless of one's political stripe, Phelps promised the party would eschew cronyism and factionalism.

At that gathering, Roberts queried Phelps about his feelings on electoral reform. On Thursday afternoon, he told the Star he didn't get a straight answer then and now he believes he knows why.

"When Willard came along and squealed on what Fentie was doing with the energy corporation, I thought, ‘maybe this guy's got something different to offer,'” said Roberts. "Now, he's proven already to me that he's going to be no different than the leaders we've had.

"Willard said I had blindsided him with electoral reform. My response to him is that he's acting just like the current government. ‘Fentie's autocratic and you're autocratic. You're not willing to accept something new,' I told him.”

Both Roberts and McLarnon plan to attend the party's founding convention, and Phelps said he has no qualms about that.

Surprisingly, McLarnon is holding out hope for Phelps' vision, even if Phelps has lost lost his way, he said.

"If I blindsided him, it was because he may be losing his peripheral vision,” McLarnon told the Star.

"Phelps said he wanted new ideas in November. I am not only bringing (mine) forward at the (June) convention, but I want to see the big-tent idea he spoke about last fall.”