Arrogant, manipulative and a bully.

That's how Willard Phelps, the former chair of the Yukon Energy Corp. (YEC) and its parent company, the Yukon Development Corp., described Yukon Premier Dennis Fentie at a rally in Lepage Park last night.

One of four members to quit both boards earlier this month in protest of secret dealings to privatize the Crown corporation, Phelps demanded a full public inquiry.

"Out of the blue, we hear of talks with ATCO," Phelps said of Fentie's attempt to sell a portion of YEC's assets and relinquish public control to Alberta-based energy giant ATCO, also owners of Yukon Electrical Co. Ltd.

These talks, Phelps told the gathering, took place for seven months without the knowledge of the YEC board.

"This is the selling-out of the corporation, on initial info, for a fraction of what it's worth. That amounts to nothing less than a slap in the face; nothing less than what I would call back-stabbing," he said.

According to Greg Hakonsen, another board member who resigned along with Phelps, that deal was to liquidate half of YEC's $600 million in assets for $50 million.

"We told them that you can't sell off 50 per cent of the company's assets at 10 cents on the dollar or whatever silly number it was going to be and have us sit at the table. We won't stand for it," Hakonsen told the Star's Dawson City correspondent, Dan Davidson.

In a rally that cut across partisan lines, Phelps, who was briefly the Yukon's Conservative government leader in 1985, NDP Leader Todd Hardy and Liberal energy critic Gary McRobb condemned Fentie's actions and demanded his government stop any move to privatize the YEC.

The gathering was the result of Hardy's challenge to Fentie for a public debate on the merits of privatizing the public energy provider; however, the premier did not attend.

For a politician who often distinguishes himself through discrediting his opponents, Fentie got a boatload of his own medicine last night that was received with enthusiastic applause by more than 50 people in attendance.

Some of the heartiest reaction came when Hardy and Phelps threw down the gauntlet at the feet of Fentie's cabinet members, challenging them to break ranks with the Yukon Party or face the wrath of Yukoners.

"I urge them to walk away from that party now if they object," said Hardy.

"Don't let the bully get away with it."

While McRobb demanded Fentie cease and desist with privatizing YEC, the harshest words were delivered by Phelps, who caged cabinet members as either cowards or accomplices to the premier's designs before mocking the Yukon Party.

"They're too afraid to stand up to him," said Phelps. "There's secret, backroom dealing, we've got back-stabbing ... none of these are Yukon values. This is not the Yukon way. But these people have the temerity to call themselves the Yukon Party."

The Fentie regime, he said, is a "tin-pot dictatorship," adding the Yukon isn't meant to be run like "a banana republic."

When the government prods an old sleeping lion like himself, Phelps told the crowd, it had better know what to do with it when it wakes up.

The gathering also heard from Don Roberts, who was a cabinet minister in former Liberal premier Pat Duncan's 2000-02 regime. He and two other MLAs eventually left the government to sit as independents.

Roberts said the current situation resembles what he endured as an MLA - watching virtually all power be centred around the party leader instead of being shared among the cabinet and caucus members.