Sallah has also served in the Pan-African Parliament, and was the National Alliance for Democracy and Development (NADD)'s candidate for president in the 2006 presidential election, coming third with 6% of the vote.

[2] After returning from the United States in the late 1970s, Sallah became involved with the People's Movement for Independence against Neo-Colonialism and Capitalism (PMINCC).

NADD, an opposition alliance that the PDOIS had joined earlier that year, had been registered as a political party, and the Supreme Court of the Gambia ruled that holding dual membership was against the Gambian Constitution.

While not mentioning Sallah by name, Yahya Jammeh made a coded reference to him and Hamat Bah when he expressed his satisfaction at the defeat of "the two empty barrels in the National Assembly".

Sallah blamed the opposition's poor performance in the election on a split in its ranks and said that he intended to retire from politics and concentrate on writing.

[13] Upon submitting his nomination to the Independent Electoral Commission, he said that it would be the duty of the incoming NAMs to build up the National Assembly as an oversight institution.

The Office of the President issued a statement in response stating that "Comparing this government to the former dictatorial regime is a distortion of facts.

[19] On 16 March, during a heated exchange over a proposed loan from China, Sallah was removed from the National Assembly on the orders of Speaker Mariam Jack-Denton.

[21] Sallah was involved in a car accident while touring the country in March 2016 and "suffered cuts to his face", but his injuries were not life-threatening.

[22] Gambia's political scientist, Amat Jeng, writes this about him: "Born in Serrekunda and educated in the US, Halifa Sallah returned home in the 1970s during the turbulent days of pan-Africanism and the Cold War, totally appalled at capitalism, neo-colonialism and the racism he saw in the US.

Part of the founding fathers of the ‘Red Star’, commonly known as the People's Movement for Independence against Neo-Colonialism and Capitalism (PMINCC), Sallah began to espouse social democracy, believing that for a nation to realize its political and social freedoms, the masses have to, first, be free from external and internal oppression and domination, and second, be educated to become masters of state and society.

For thirty years, Halifa was popular with the educated few, but failed massively to win the support of the masses, because they never understood his politics.