Willard Phelps, theYukon political veteran and founder of the United Citizens Party, will not run in the next territorial election and has no plans to continue work on the party he leads and officially registered at the end of last year.

"I'm not as full of piss and vinegar as I used to be and really, I can't see making a commitment that takes me down a four- or five-year path,” the 69-year-old Phelps told the Star this morning.

It's an about-face for Phelps, who less than two years ago aimed to form and lead a "big tent” political party to knock Premier Dennis Fentie and the ruling Yukon Party out of office.

"We're in it to win it,” the former government leader under the now-defunct Progressive Conservative banner declared of his embryonic United Citizens Party in in April 2010.

In October 2010, Phelps registered the party and today said it still exists, "but I suspect it will not be in existence in due course, as I'm not aware of anybody wanting to pick up the reins.”

With Fentie retiring as leader and a three-way leadership race on for the Yukon Party's leadership underway, the primary impetus behind Phelps' party has been rendered moot.

"I'm pleased to see he has stepped down because I very much disagreed with his dictatorial style, secrecy, and lack of forthrightness with Yukoners,” said Phelps.

"Anyway, that's behind us, and the important thing is when myself and three other Yukoners (resigned from Yukon Energy) ... that stopped the fire sale of the assets of our important utility.”

Phelps made news in June 2009 when he, along with Greg Hakonson, Paul Hunter and Martin Allen, quit the Yukon Energy Corporation's board to protest Fentie's back room designs to privatize the public utility in a deal with Calgary-based ATCO.

While Fentie denied any privatization deal between the public utility and ATCO's territorial subsidiary, Yukon Electrical Co. Ltd. (YECL), Phelps released a document to the contrary.

Entitled "joint position paper” and produced by Department of Energy, Mines and Resources officials and consultants it hired, the document outlines a merger of the energy corporation's $200 million worth of assets with YECL's assets, valued at $63 million, to create "OPCO”.

The new entity would be owned 50/50 by the Yukon government and ATCO, but appointing power to OPCO's board of directors tipped in favour of ATCO.

After leading the energy corporation exodus, Phelps began a campaign to remove Fentie from power.

In the fall of 2009, Phelps commissioned a poll, the results of which showed two out of three respondents were dissatisfied with the ruling Yukon Party and its opposition Liberal and New Democratic Party counterparts.

A meeting that November to float what Phelps called a "big-tent Unity Party” of concerned voters from across the political spectrum drew 100 people to the Gold Rush Inn in Whitehorse.

But between then and Sept. 21, 2010 – the date Phelps officially registered his party with Elections Yukon – support for his political movement waned.

Nearly a year ago to the day, Phelps expunged a pair of would-be collaborators – Don Roberts and Mike McLarnon; two of three MLAs who in 2002 left Pat Duncan's short-lived Liberal government to sit as independents – from the Unity Party's inner circle.

Phelps' reason: McLarnon went public with some ideas for the party's constitution without Phelps' approval, and Roberts wanted to promote electoral reform – another idea that Phelps wants nothing to do with, then or today.

"(Roberts') big belief wasn't in the party but in his electoral reform ideas, and the two were inconsistent,” Phelps said back in May 2010.

"And I don't agree with all those who say the golden answer (to improving the Westminster system) in the Yukon is to change the voting system.”

Adding to Phelps' challenges was the prospect of a territorial Green Party entering the fray.

The November 2009 meeting attracted federal Green Party candidate John Streicker, who encouraged his supporters – many of whom were also in attendance – to consider Phelps' idea.

A year after that meeting, however, a faction of Streicker's team announced it would establish a territorial Green Party, and this past March, officially registered it with Elections Yukon.

Rod Taylor, outgoing president of the Tourism Industry Association Yukon, Darrell Pasloski, the Conservative runner-up in the 2008 federal election, and sitting Yukon Party MLA Jim Kenyon are vying for the Yukon Party leadership at the party's May 28 convention.

The winner has until Oct. 14 to call the territorial election.