The President’s Office has revised and reissued a statement from Chief Spokesperson Mohamed Hussain Shareef (Mundhu) after an initial version attacking the news outlet Dhauru was deleted and replaced with more tempered language.
The dispute began after Dhauru published a fact-check regarding Shareef’s claim that the decision to mandate resorts to exchange 40 percent of their foreign currency earnings was made following consultations with resort owners. The news outlet labelled Shareef’s assertion as a "blatant lie."
In a late-night response published on the official President’s Office website, Shareef issued a two-page statement firing back at the outlet, accusing Dhauru of spreading "outright falsehoods."
However, the statement was scrubbed from the website shortly after publication. A revised version was later uploaded, in which the aggressive rhetoric was toned down; the phrase "blatant lie" was replaced with the more formal "contrary to the facts."
Shareef did not respond to phone calls or messages seeking comment on the reasons behind the sudden retraction and revision of the official statement.
The original statement drew immediate and widespread public criticism, with many social media users arguing that the unprofessional tone was unbecoming of the nation’s highest office.
"Is this actually the official President’s Office page? I had to check twice to be sure," one Facebook user remarked, reacting to the spokesperson's initial choice of words.
Another commenter noted that such language "is not what should be written on the page of a country’s President’s Office," urging the administration not to behave like "local tabloid pages."
