Manitoba NDP still divided 1 year after failed rebellion against Greg Selinger

Political divisions continue to plague Manitoba's governing New Democrats just weeks ahead of the provincial election and on the one year anniversary of the day NDP Leader Greg Selinger clung to power by the narrowest of margins.

After 12 months to reflect on the failed rebellion against Selinger, Dauphin MLA Stan Struthers, one of the so-called 'gang of five,' said he wouldn't have done anything differently.

"We just didn't get up one morning and decide we were going to overthrow the government," said Struthers, who along with his colleagues say they had privately pleaded with Selinger to step down for months.

"I always take my share of responsibility. I am one of the ones, though, who can say I sacrificed and stuck my neck out in an effort to help the NDP. There are others who can't say that."

Seine River MLA Theresa Oswald lost the NDP leadership election to Selinger by 33 votes on the second ballot on March 8, 2015.

The leadership contest was sparked by a caucus revolt in the fall of 2014 when Oswald and four other cabinet ministers, Struthers, Jennifer Howard, Andrew Swan and Erin Selby, quit Selinger's side.

Struthers was the municipal affairs minister at the time of the mass resignation. Prior to that the veteran MLA was the finance minister tasked with presenting the 2013 budget which raised the PST by one-percentage-point, a decision the rebel ministers insisted was thrust on the electorate without enough warning.

Shortly after Oswald lost the leadership election, Struthers was the first dissident to say he would not seek re-election with Selinger. He is still critical of the embattled NDP Leader and said the party had a chance to offer the electorate a change within the party, but failed to do so.

"We tried our best to avoid an electoral disaster," he said.

"We tried our best to make sure our party knew some of the shady decisions that had been made."

The longtime cabinet minister said he's put a resume together and he's had a couple interviews recently, but will not disclose what he's been applying for.

"I'm 56 years old and I think I have another career in me," Struthers said.

Royce Koop political scientist at the University of Manitoba said he'd expected the NDP to rebound after New Democratic delegates narrowly voted to keep Selinger as boss.

"The NDP is an old disciplined party, they don't win as many elections as they have without some discipline and I thought the party was going to come together as best as they could and I'm actually really surprised that they haven't," Koop said.

"There certainly was the potential I think for the party to come together but it does not seem to have happened."

Of the five rebel cabinet ministers, only one, Minto MLA Andrew Swan is seeking re-election.

Koop said that coupled with last month's caucus outburst by St Norbert MLA Dave Gaudreau show the party isn't meshing.

"The whole point there was to try and unify around a leader, it was to kind of get past all this and start preparing for an election campaign where they could face kind of the 'real' enemy, Brian Pallister, and it hasn't happened," he said.

Recent public opinion polls have Selinger's support hovering around the 20 per cent mark, tied with the Manitoba Liberals, way behind the Progressive Conservatives.

"It was going to be a hard election for [Greg Selinger] anyway, without his party solidly behind him, it's going to be much worse," Koop said.

Still, one year after keeping his job as leader, Greg Selinger is confident he can keep his job as premier, too.

That's even though he's had to watch several veteran MLAs bow out of the race, including Justice Minister Gord Mackintosh and Culture, Heritage and Tourism Minister Ron Lemieux.

One of the former cabinet ministers who rebelled against Selinger, Fort Rouge MLA Jennifer Howard, was being used as the NDP's campaign spokesperson as recently as this January.

It looked like Howard and Selinger had buried the hatchet and she had confirmed her candidacy in the 2016 election at a party nomination meeting.

Suddenly at the end of January an about-face, Howard bailed on the race and announced she was leaving politics. In an email to CBC, Howard declined an interview and wrote she was "focused on looking forward, not back."