The three person NDP leadership committee has rejected Yves Engler’s candidate application. The Montreal-based writer and activist held a press conference on Wednesday, December 10 where he decried the decision as undemocratic.
“The audacity, chauvinism and absurdity of the NDP vetting committee is a sight to behold. To justify denying party members the right to choose whether they want me to lead the party, the three-person backroom committee is citing ‘democracy,’” said Engler in a press release.
Engler said that his campaign had raised over the required $100,000 entry fee for the race, showing that he had secured popular support.
“I would say very clearly there’s far more support for this campaign than I believed when we began this process,” Engler said at Wednesday’s press conference. “I did not believe there would be this level of support, financial and otherwise, for this campaign, and the NDP has been made nervous by that.”
Candidacy rejected based on behavioural allegations
In an email to Engler shared with rabble.ca the NDP stated that it was rejecting his candidacy based on what it saw as “behaviour that is not in the best interests of the Party as a whole.”
This alleged behaviour, according to the NDP, includes the promotion of “authoritarian and anti-democratic views” through the alleged denialism of the Rwandan Genocide, what they called “echoing Russian state propaganda with respect to the Russo-Ukrainian war and NATO,” and expressing sympathy for former Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad.
Evidence that the party provided for these allegations mostly came from Engler’s social media, website, and YouTube channel.
The NDP also alleged that Engler promoted anti-semitic attitudes by allegedly minimizing the prevalence of antisemitism, promoting the idea that Jews are overrepresented in positions of influence, among other related claims.
There were two other areas of behaviour which the NDP felt disqualified Engler.
The first being their view that he had an unclear commitment to the NDP. They cite his criticism of the party as one reason to support this claim. Of his criticism, they write that he has been “making antagonistic comments about the NDP – well beyond healthy debate – which baselessly attack the NDP and foster public doubt in the Party’s administration.”
They also cite Engler’s well-documented practice of confronting public figures on the street or at events and filming them while asking them questions as another reason to disqualify him.
In response to these allegations, Engler challenged the NDP to let its members decide if they had merit.
“If they all think that I’m just some Putin asset, Rwandan genocide denier, anti-Semite, all this stuff. If they really believe all this stuff, let the members decide. The members will decide whether this is just character assassination or if this has real substance,” he said Wednesday.
Campaign not ending here
Engler said that his campaign for the leadership was not done yet, despite this serious setback.
He said that he would be petitioning the NDP’s federal council to reverse the leadership committee’s decision.
If the decision is not reversed, Engler is already planning a nationwide campaign where he plans to travel and talk about his platform right up to the NDP convention at the end of March next year where the next party leader will be chosen.
Engler has raised the requisite $100,000 in donations to fund his entry into the race. He said that money will be used as a part of his ongoing campaign to spread the word about his platform and emphasized that if anyone wished to be refunded their money, they simply had to ask.
Former Canadian Union of Postal Workers president Mike Palecek and Rabbi David Mivasair both appeared and spoke in support of Engler at Wednesday’s virtual press conference.
“The decision that was just handed down to us puts the NDP’s future in jeopardy. A handful of table officers have decided to essentially rig an election,” said Palecek. “By banning the only person who’s got the largest campaign rallies. Who’s got over 1000 volunteers signed up, who’s managed to build this momentum. They wanna quash this campaign without any democratic representation, without a chance for members to actually make their own decision for who’s going to lead this party.”
Rabbi Mivasair said that it was important that Engler’s ideas for the future of the NDP had a proper airing and given proper consideration by the party’s supporters.
“Its not about Yves as a person, it’s about getting these ideas into the discourse so that we can all consider them and whoever ends up being the leader of the NDP and others in the NDP can promote these ideas,” he said.
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