Updated 4.20pm with PN statement
Former TVM head of news Norma Saliba announced she is to run for the post of Labour Party president.
On Saturday, Saliba said she was urged to contest the post by Labour leader Robert Abela and had the backing of Ian Borg and Alex Agius Saliba, the two confirmed candidates for the party’s two deputy leadership posts.
“New impetus and fresh ideas are needed for the party to renew itself,” she wrote on Facebook on Saturday. “I will work with all my strength to fulfil party delegates’ wish of ensuring Labour remains Malta’s biggest political force.”
Saliba announced her candidacy on Saturday morning, confirming what lawyer and former PN MP Jason Azzopardi wrote on Facebook hours earlier.
Azzopardi linked Saliba's bid to a scandal surrounding the prime's minister's cabinet secretary Ryan Spagnol.
Saliba’s decision to run for the presidency means Labour delegates are poised for a competitive contest when internal party elections are held on September 13 and 14.
Lawyer Alex Sciberras, the son of the late judge Philip Sciberras, said on Friday that he would be contesting the post.
The party’s two deputy leadership posts, on the other hand, appear likely to be uncontested affairs. Foreign Affairs Minister Ian Borg will run for deputy leader of parliamentary affairs and is rumoured to have the backing of Labour’s MPs to do so. If elected, he will become deputy prime minister.
Labour MEP Alex Agius Saliba has also said he intends to run for the other deputy leadership post, for party affairs. So far, no other candidate has said they will contest him.
Until last summer, Saliba led the newsroom of Malta’s national broadcaster, TVM. She was edged out of that post in July 2023, saying obliquely that she had been targeted through a “character assassination campaign”.
Within weeks, she was given a new €72,000-a-year job as the head of a newly-created Centre for the Maltese Language.
That appointment prompted criticism and even legal action by the National Council of the Maltese Language, whose board said it was not consulted before Minister Owen Bonnici created the new role and appointed Saliba to it.
Officially, Saliba remains on TVM's books while being loaned out to the Centre for the Maltese Language.
Saliba did not respond to a request for comment from Times of Malta when questioned about her continued employment at PBS.
Turned TVM into propaganda machine - PN
In a statement, the Nationalist Party accused the prime minister of rewarding Saliba for turning Malta’s public broadcaster into a government propaganda machine.
Abela “is rewarding the person who turned the public station into Super One Two,” said the statement signed by PN general secretary Michael Piccinino and broadcasting shadow minister Claudette Buttigieg.
By asking Saliba to contest the role of PL president, Abela had proven how she only served his interests during her time as TVM’s head of news, the PN said.
The opposition recalled how the public broadcaster’s newsroom was found guilty three times for breaking the fundamental rights of the Nationalist Party.