Norma Saliba, recently appointed head of the new Centre for the Maltese Language, warned that she was the victim of a character assassination plot.

Saliba questioned the efforts of the Maltese Council for the Maltese Language, which denounced her appointment as “illegal”, asking what the entity actually did to preserve Malta’s national language.

“What work has it done and what projects do they have for the preservation and promotion of the Maltese language?”

What vision does the Council have for the coming years so that Maltese is not lost in the light of the latest social and economic developments?” she wrote in a Facebook post on Friday, among a slew of other questions.

She added that “she feels that the campaign of character assassination has continued and has recently been charged against me”.

“If I am criticized for a job I have done, I accept it because I am not infallible. But to break a person without even meeting them, talking to them, forming an opinion about them based on the perception of some who use the media to pass their own, or worse than that they are exposed in a series of attacks, insults, insults and stamps of ‘ either way, I will never accept it,” she said.

Saliba broke her silence about the contraversy surronded her appointment to the newly formed council, after she was edged out of PBS, Malta’s national broadcasting services, following internal disagreements.

A legal notice released just before her surprise appointment announced that the centre will serve as an “administrative, organisational and operational organ of the National Council of the Maltese Language,”.

It didn’t go down smoothly with the council, which gave Culture Minister Owen Bonnici 10 days to withdraw the legal notice to set up a centre together with Saliba’s appointment.

Mark Amaira, an expert in the Maltese language, previously complained about the “humiliation” of the Maltese language and Saliba’s “illegal” appointment.

What do you make of Saliba’s claims?