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“I worry when the party comes in and has ultimate control — or the leader has ultimate control — over everybody,” he said.

“It might be a contentious issue, but as an MLA you need to pick a side. To tell your MLAs, ‘You’re leaving the house and not voting on this issue at all,’ it reeks a little bit of dictatorship stuff to me.”

Nomination blunders, interference

Donovan said he kept hoping what he sees as top-heavy control would change, but that hasn’t happened, he said.

He is particularly worried about the host of controversies around UCP candidate nominations for the 2019 election, including an official complaint to the election commissioner by Highwood MLA Wayne Anderson, questions around former UCP candidate Jeff Callaway being a “kamikaze” candidate for Kenney, and delays to the UCP candidate nomination in Red Deer South.

Even in his own constituency, he said, party members were restricted to four hours in which they could vote for a nomination candidate.

“(Party leadership) want to have very tight control of what their candidates are doing, which I can understand for the bozo eruptions and whatnot, but … that also tells me — when people are sitting around a caucus table, are they going to be able to have a free vote in the legislature?”

Donovan was elected as Wildrose MLA for Little Bow in 2012 and crossed the floor to the Progressive Conservatives in 2014.

He said Sunday he left Wildrose because he was being told to vote on something — just like what he’s currently seeing in the UCP.