The National Council for the Maltese Language has issued a statement to clarify the internal reactions within the Council in reaction to the setting up Centre for the Maltese Language.
The National Council said that that the claim that their President Olvin Vella was asked to resign was “a fabrication that appeared in the media to try and split and weaken the Council”.
The Council wrote that the President was never asked to resign and clarified the events that transpired after the announcement of the Centre for the Maltese Language.
The National Council said to have “full confidence” in Vella, who as an academic, “has worked incessantly in favour of the Maltese language as his aspiration and his only agenda”.
Vella has been President of the National Council since 2020. Prior to this, he was a member of the Council for the three-year terms commencing in 2009 and 2017 respectively.
It was described that Vella had truly attempted to file in his resignation following this controversial announcement, however, the rest of the National Council unanimously disagreed with this decision, and thus, they refused to accept his resignation. The given reasoning behind Vella’s actions was that “he had unwittingly fallen into a trap that was set for him.”
Following this clarification, the National Council for the Maltese Language stated that they unanimously and freely voted against the recent imposition of the Centre for the Maltese Language.
The setting up of the Centre was announced by Culture Minister Owen Bonnici earlier this August. This Centre made recent news due to its illegal set-up, since no formal consultation process was held before its announcement, and because former TVM Head of News Norma Saliba was appointed to lead it.
This newsroom previously reported that Saliba was still employed by PBS and was “being lent” to lead the Centre for the Maltese Language. It later emerged that Saliba was earning an annual salary of €72,000 for this new position.
Referencing Saliba’s lack of language qualifications to lead the Centre and the judicial protest previously filed because of this, the National Council concluded their statement to formally disapprove of her appointment.
“We deplore the fact that those who are qualified and have worked all their lives with a spirit of dedication and without remuneration in favour of our language are being sidelined and treated in the worst possible manner in preference to persons who are unqualified in the subject, for reasons other than the good of the Maltese language.”