During the conversation Shareef questions the support for former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom in Addu, and suggested that were Gayoom’s faction to campaign there, “we will beat them up and drag them away [from Addu].”

That led to a crowd gathering outside the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) headquarters calling for the resignation of Shareef and Leader Ahmed Thasmeen Ali. When Shareef confronted the crowd he was attacked, and escorted to safety by police.

The source of the leaked phone call, which was aired on MNBC and DhiFM, has not been identified. However Shareef told Haveeru that the recording was engineered by mixing parts of a conversation he had with several different people, after dismissed Deputy Leader Umar Naseer “created conflicts by attending our function.”

“We were have conversations with several people. A group of people recorded such a conversation and leaked it,” he told Haveeru. “The part of the leaked audio, in which I was saying ‘Gayoom cannot go to Addu to campaign’, was edited. I never said it directly.”

Shareef and Thasmeen were not responding to calls at time of press.

Spokesperson for Gayoom Hussein ‘Mundhu’ Shareef was quoted in Haveeru as saying that Mavota Shareef owed an apology to the former President: “Maumoon holds the most honorary position in the DRP and is linked to many people’s spirit. So no-one can make a comment in order to tarnish the reputation of Maumoon,” Haveeru reported Mundhu as saying.