May’s presence in Green Party ‘problematic’

Past leadership contender sitting this one out

The runner-up in the 2020 Green leadership race says he won’t join this year’s contest, in part because he sees former leader Elizabeth May’s continued presence in the party as an obstacle to its future success after a year of fierce infighting.

Dimitri Lascaris, an avowed “eco-socialist” who placed a strong second when Annamie Paul won the federal Green leadership in 2020, told the Star this week that he won’t run in the upcoming race to replace her, after she resigned last fall amid bitter tensions over her tenure in the role.

Lascaris said his decision rests in part on the fact that May, who led the party from 2006 to 2019 and is one of two Green MPs in the House of Commons, remains a force in the party. Claiming it is time for May to step away from politics to make space for the next Green leader, Lascaris argued her influence would prevent the party from veering to the far left, where he sees a “vacuum” the Greens could fill to become more politically relevant.

May said she was too busy to respond to Lascaris’s comments before the Star’s deadline.

“It would be in the best interest of the party if Elizabeth May gracefully departed the scene and moved on to other endeavours,” Lascaris said, while crediting May for winning the Greens’ first seat in Canada and achieving their best electoral result — with three MPs — in 2019.

“Her continuing to linger within the power structure of the party is problematic — I think it was problematic for Annamie and will be problematic for whoever becomes the next leader,” he added.

Paul, who was the first Black person elected to lead a mainstream federal party, resigned last fall after 13 months in the job.

As the Star reported extensively, her tenure was marked by vicious party infighting that saw Paul — as well as the party’s then-diversity co-ordinator — accuse operatives on the Greens’ inner governing body of racism and sexism. Her detractors, meanwhile, accused her of poor leadership that clashed with the party’s vision of collective decision-making, and of mishandling an episode where one of her top aides accused unnamed Green MPs of anti-Semitism before one of them — Fredericton’s Jenica Atwin — defected to join the Liberals.

Some party insiders, including the aide involved in the Atwin controversy, have also alleged Paul’s opponents were more loyal to May during the drama surrounding the leadership.

May has denied there was a faction of her supporters working against Paul, and admitted last fall that Paul was her “first choice” for leader during the 2020 race.

Paul won that contest on the eighth ballot, when she beat Lascaris by 2,009 votes.

Lascaris himself is no stranger to controversy, having been accused of making anti-Semitic comments that drew condemnation from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2018. This was part of the reason May tried to get the party to disqualify Lascaris just weeks before the end of the 2020 leadership race, according to emails obtained by the Star last year.

On top of his concerns about May, Lascaris said he is sitting out the next leadership contest for two more reasons.

The first is that he feels he would not be able to share his foreign policy views, particularly his criticism of western support for Ukraine after the Russian invasion, if he became party leader — a position that Greens often describe as simply the chief spokesperson for the membership, rather than the sole decision-maker on policy.

The second reason is that he worries his candidacy could revive the “toxicity” of the Paul era, because of how he was her primary rival in the 2020 leadership race.

After Paul’s resignation, British Columbia’s Amita Kuttner took over as interim leader with a pledge to heal divisions inside the party and stage a leadership race in 2022. The rules for the contest are slated for release by the end of June, a party spokesperson said Wednesday.

‘‘ It would be in the best interest of the party if Elizabeth May gracefully departed the scene and moved on to other endeavours.

DIMITRI LASCARIS RUNNER-UP IN THE 2020 GREEN LEADERSHIP RACE