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For a growing number of angry, disaffected NDP supporters, Thomas Mulcair is fast becoming Stephen Harper with a beard.

That’s what we’ve learned since iPolitics began probing the internecine war gripping the NDP in the wake of senior party officials’ decision to ban aspiring NDP nominee Paul Manly from seeking the nomination in a B.C. riding, where he and his steeped-in-orange parents are very popular.

In my column last week, I told you about the charges and counter-charges, distortions, misinformation, smears and innuendo being tossed about by top NDP HQ operatives – including the party’s National Director Anne McGrath — over Manly’s so-far-unexplained disqualification from the nomination in Nanaimo-Ladysmith.

This fracas is instructive for a number of reasons. The prickly issue at the core of the dispute – the thing that is fraying party unity and triggering hard questions about Mulcair’s leadership – is the set of vague, carefully-coded reasons NDP brass have proffered to Manly, his parents and supporters for why this accomplished environmentalist, filmmaker and musician has been barred from the party’s nomination in traditionally NDP-friendly British Columbia.

There’s little doubt that Manly was summarily blocked from contesting the nomination, in part, to shield Mulcair, B.C. caucus members — including peeved MPs Libby Davies and Jean Crowder — and the party from losing support during the next election campaign.

The irony is that the NDP is already bleeding voters from within its own ranks because of Manly’s ban, and it’s only getting worse. Many NDP members and supporters — in and outside B.C. — are emphatically telling Mulcair & Co. that Manly’s dismissal is causing them to abandon the party or to seriously consider leaving it.

Other New Democrats are expressing their displeasure with the secretive vetting process that led to Manly’s dismissal as a potential candidate — one strikingly reminiscent of the paranoid mentality at work in the Harper regime.

As you know, this nation’s control-freak prime minister surrounds himself with kids in shorts pants to ensure that everyone knows that it’s the ‘boss’ who calls the shots. Harper’s minions mete out his orders and discipline with fanatical zeal and little sense. The tactics ensure ‘rebels’ who speak their minds immediately understand that dissent – however measured or defensible – will not be tolerated.

“Manly’s sharp criticism of the party, Mulcair and his would-be caucus colleagues made him radioactive in the eyes of the party brass. He was also deemed a ‘loose cannon’….”

Well, it’s apparent that some equally obsequious zealots populate the NDP leader’s inner circle. And, like Harper’s disciples, the members of Mulcair’s shadow privy council are ready, willing and able to quickly disappear even long-time, loyal NDP supporters because what they say (or might say) doesn’t reflect well on Mulcair.

Manly’s banishment has also laid bare the visceral discord over Mulcair’s apparent ambivalence on events in Gaza. Just read this pointed letter of protest written and signed by nine long-standing Jewish NDP supporters in Toronto to Mulcair in which they demand that he not only finally speak out against “the repression of Palestinians” but also “rescind” Manly’s ban.

They’re not alone. Among the many other disenchanted party members is a “deeply dismayed” Vancouver rabbi and a “long-time and dedicated NDP member” who also recently wrote to Mulcair, urging him to “reverse (the federal NDP leadership’s) action preventing Mr. Manly from standing to be the candidate from Nanaimo-Ladysmith and its attempt to distance the party from meaningful and forthright action regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict.”

The awful images of the disproportionate toll being exacted on Palestinians – children, in particular – in Gaza have shocked and disturbed much of the world. Yet in the face of this humanitarian catastrophe and Israel’s overwhelming and destructive ground invasion, Mulcair has remained largely silent. Instead, he has dispatched Paul Dewar, the party’s foreign affairs critic, to urge both sides to “de-escalate.”

The frustration among a lot of NDP supporters with Mulcair’s telling silence runs so deep that the following poem is being circulated by party members, who are urging that it be forwarded to every New Democrat MP and their staff:

MULCAIR IS OUR LEADER

Mulcair is our leader

We shall not speak;

He maketh us to toe the Zionist line;

He turneth from the suffering of Gaza and standeth firm for Israel.

Yea, tho’ he tramples on NDP Policy

Yea, tho’ the people of Gaza are dragged though the Valley of Death

We shall speak no evil,

For Mulcair is over us;

His caucus and whip, they muzzle us.

Surely Mulcair and Zionism shall follow us

All the days of this session

And we shall be covered with the shroud of silence forever.

It’s an ugly, mangled mess that may get worse in the days and weeks ahead.

First, a little history: When Manly went public with his ban earlier this month on his Facebook page he told his supporters that his candidacy had been “blocked” because of “what I said and what I did when my father was in Israel.”

In October 2012, Manly’s dad – ex NDP MP Jim Manly – took part in a failed attempt to break an Israeli maritime embargo of Gaza. Manly was detained and briefly held incommunicado by Israeli authorities. At the time, Manly junior lashed out at Harper and his government for failing to do more to secure Manly senior’s release. He also accused the NDP of “not standing up” for his imprisoned father and “international law.”

Manly’s Facebook post caused a big, lingering PR migraine for NDP HQ, as it more than suggested Mulcair & Co had disqualified a popular NDP stalwart for having criticized the party for its ‘restrained’ reaction to Israel’s deadly assault in Gaza.

To blunt the blowback, McGrath wrote concerned and outraged NDP supporters, telling them: “I can assure you that the issue being cited in stories and social media about Mr. Manly’s rejected application is not accurate. The rejection is not related to the NDP’s position on the Middle East.”

That just poured gasoline on an already out-of-control fire. Not surprisingly, Manly saw this as a “smear” because it leaves open the possibility the that he was guilty of some immoral, illegal or unethical act. He demanded the NDP put its reasons for their decision in writing.

The problem NDP HQ has is that too many people were already privy to the truth and they told others. It turns out that McGrath disqualified Manly principally because he had also suggested in his 2012 interview with the Vancouver Sun’s Peter O’Neil, that the party had “lost it’s way” and Mulcair had “whipped and muzzled” Davies and Crowder into silence while his elderly father was in an Israeli jail.

Manly’s sharp criticism of the party, Mulcair and his would-be caucus colleagues made him radioactive in the eyes of the party brass. He was also deemed a “loose cannon” for having “insulted” Mulcair, Davies and Crowder, sources say.

The NDP’s political calculation is that federal election campaigns are largely run by competing war rooms that try to throw their opponents off-balance by planting stories with overworked, inexperienced and lazy reporters who need to constantly satisfy their editors’ demands for content. Manly’s comments are the kind of fodder that gets used as a momentum-killer at key moments in an election campaign.

As a result, the overarching concern at NDP HQ was that Manly’s caustic remarks would be thrust back in Mulcair’s face during an election campaign. It was a risk not worth taking since, as McGrath pointed out in her letter to NDP supporters defending her decision to disqualify Manly, election campaigns can be prohibitively expensive.

In this context, McGrath’s earlier assertion that Manly’s disqualification was “not related to the NDP’s position on the Middle East” is arguably political parsing of the first order.

First, Manly made his comments at a time when he was understandably frustrated and impatient because his elderly father was being held incommunicado by Israeli authorities for having attempted to breach an embargo imposed by Israel on besieged Palestinians in Gaza. For McGrath to separate the two inextricably-linked issues is disingenuous and self-serving.

It is absurd for McGrath to suggest that Manley was supposed to keep his mouth shut while his dad was locked an Israeli prison simply because, at some point down the road, he might want to run for the NDP nomination in Nanaimo-Ladysmith.

Taken together, the NDP’s decision to bar Manly from the nomination is absurd, cynical and, frankly, heartless — not the image the NDP has carefully cultivated for the past 50 years or more.

Nevertheless, Manly’s reaction has been to calmly insist that the NDP put it all down on paper.

“Fine, put it writing … It’s the decent thing to do,” Manly told me on Friday. “I suspected that was the reason. To say that I’m a ‘loose cannon’ … I mean, my father was about to turn 80 in prison. He was incommunicado. We hadn’t heard from him. My own MP (Jean Crowder) wouldn’t speak out for my father, who was seized illegally, according to international law.

“I have a right to know, my supporters have a right to know … This isn’t a job application. It’s part of the democratic process.”

And rather than backing away from his two-year-old comments, Manly stands by his criticism of the NDP’s tepid response to his father’s incarceration.

“They refused to speak out about a former colleague and an elder statesman of the party who was on a humanitarian mission,” Manly says. “Am I not going to speak out on behalf of my father because I have political ambitions? He was my father.

“If I were an MP, I would speak out for a constituent who was in a similar circumstance (as my father), who was (detained) illegally, whether it’s in Iran, Israel or Russia … It’s a duty of a Member of Parliament to speak out for their constituents.”

In the end, Manly remains philosophical about his quashed candidacy: “You can’t regret anything in life. So you carry on.”

Still, he has this simple warning for other would-be NDP candidates contemplating joining Thomas Mulcair’s ‘team’ in Ottawa: “Be careful what you say.”

Andrew Mitrovica is a writer and journalism instructor. For much of his career, Andrew was an investigative reporter for a variety of news organizations and publications including the CBC’s fifth estate, CTV’s W5, CTV National News — where he was the network’s chief investigative producer — the Walrus magazine and the Globe and Mail, where he was a member of the newspaper’s investigative unit. During the course of his 23-year career, Andrew has won numerous national and international awards for his investigative work.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.