{"id":91446,"date":"2025-12-06T18:19:28","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T18:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/uncategorized\/gibbi-mballow-criticizes-udp-lawmakers-budget-boycott"},"modified":"2025-12-06T19:27:50","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T19:27:50","slug":"gibbi-mballow-criticizes-udp-lawmakers-budget-boycott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/gibbi-mballow-criticizes-udp-lawmakers-budget-boycott","title":{"rendered":"Gibbi Mballow Criticizes UDP Lawmakers&#8217; Budget Boycott"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Gambia. <\/strong><\/span><b>Gibbi Mballow, the National Assembly member representing Lower Fulladu West, on Friday sharply criticized lawmakers from the opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) for boycotting the presentation of the 2026 national budget, calling their absence a dereliction of duty and a disservice to the Gambian public.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is very sad; this is a very important event, the budget speech. We are not seeing our colleagues, who are the UDP National Assembly members; they are boycotting this event because somebody, a legal luminary, has made statements that are very touching and scary for this nation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Mballow argued that lawmakers have a constitutional and moral responsibility to attend parliamentary sittings, particularly those involving national financial planning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd going back to our constitution, also in section 112, it talked about members; we must be ready to serve the interests of our people, and this budget speech is one of the most important elements in our democratic process, and today, it is all of us; nobody is above the law,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>He suggested that the boycott placed personal and political interests above national priorities. \u201cFor somebody to be called for questions warranting you to deviate from the job that you are entitled to do, this is a national event that is above personal interest, is above an individual matter,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>UDP members staged the boycott in protest over the detention of Borry S. Touray, a senior party figure, who was being held at the Police Headquarters in Banjul. The lawmakers argued that his arrest was politically motivated and demanded his immediate release.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the boycott, the budget speech proceeded as scheduled, though the absence of the main opposition bloc was conspicuous in the chamber.<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Gambia<\/span> Follow <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Africa-Press<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Gambia. Gibbi Mballow, the National Assembly member representing Lower Fulladu West, on Friday sharply criticized lawmakers from the opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) for boycotting the presentation of the 2026 national budget, calling their absence a dereliction of duty and a disservice to the Gambian public. \u201cIt is very sad; this is a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":91445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7,10,2366],"tags":[260],"class_list":["post-91446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-head-lines","category-parties","category-to-homepage","tag-gambia"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Gibbi Mballow Criticizes UDP Lawmakers&#039; Budget Boycott - Gambia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Gibbi Mballow, the National Assembly member representing Lower Fulladu West, on Friday sharply criticized lawmakers f ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/gibbi-mballow-criticizes-udp-lawmakers-budget-boycott\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Gibbi Mballow Criticizes UDP Lawmakers&#039; Budget Boycott\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Gibbi Mballow, the National Assembly member representing Lower Fulladu West, on Friday sharply criticized lawmakers f ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/gibbi-mballow-criticizes-udp-lawmakers-budget-boycott\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Gambia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-12-06T18:19:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-06T19:27:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/gambia\/sites\/19\/2025\/12\/sm_1765036315.269796.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/gibbi-mballow-criticizes-udp-lawmakers-budget-boycott#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/gibbi-mballow-criticizes-udp-lawmakers-budget-boycott\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Gibbi Mballow Criticizes UDP Lawmakers&#8217; 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