The leader of the United Democratic Party (UDP), Ousainou Darboe has challenged the party’s breakaway members of the National Assembly to resign and face by-election.
Some UDP MPs are said to have shifted allegiance from the party to President Adama Barrow following his feud with Darboe and the UDP executive which resulted to Darboe’s dismissal as Vice President in March.
Addressing his supporters over the weekend at a rally in the Central River Region, Darboe said the breakaway MPs should test their popularity at the polls by resigning from the UDP and giving up their parliamentary seats.
“If you think that you are popular or you have the support of others and think that you are untouchable, resign your seat so that a by-election can be called,” he told the MPs. “If you also think that you can betray the UDP and go free, the electorate are here and they don’t move anywhere and 2022 election will be the final judge.”
Darboe also mocked that some of the breakaway MPs were lucky to win UDP’s ticket to vie for the parliamentary seats, alleging that they’re insincere to the course of defeating dictatorship, restoration of the rule of law and nurturing democracy in the country.
“If anyone of you is thinking that supporting Adama Barrow is what is going to bring development to your region you are fooling yourself. The MPs are the ones who discuss the national budget and they are the ones who decide who gets what from the budget. So if they (MPs) come to you (electorate) and tell you they support Barrow in order to attract development that is false,” said Darboe.
It’s not clear how many MPs have dumped the UDP for President Barrow.
The UDP leader also decried CRR’s “poor infrastructure, lack of qualified doctors and lack of adequate educational institutions that can better the lives of the people living in the area.”
He alleged that some seating MPs in the region were bent on politicizing the rural electricity project, arguing that the project is a Gambia government and African Development Bank project signed during the time of Yahya Jammeh on behalf of the rural people.
“If you observe from Ballangharr up to Sami there is no effective health Center in the area. Even Kuntaur that they claimed to be a major health center – if you go there and compare it with other countries it will look like a dispensary. There is no doctor in Karantaba Major health Center and you still calling them major health centers.”
He said “the UDP government will give the people of CRR North their fair share of the national cake.”
