President says he ‘didn’t expect anything else’ about criticism on first 100 days

President Nikos Christodoulides on Wednesday responded to harsh criticism by opposition parties about his 100 days in office speech saying he didn’t expect anything different.

In statements outside a conference of chartered accountants, Christodoulides was questioned about the harsh criticism from the opposition.

He said: “All good, we are moving forward.”

When pressed by the journalist further, he said “Did you expect anything different? Because I didn’t.”

In a statement following the speech on Tuesday, opposition Akel insisted that major changes are needed to address the issues at hand rather than amendments to the previous ten years of government.

“The major social problems of the Cypriot people – wages, cost of living, housing – are becoming more acute and require solutions with a radically different policy, not new announcements. We have seen this work over the past ten years,” the opposition party said.

It noted, however, that it supports the new government where it views positive changes have been made – namely the overhaul of the previous school exam system.

In their reaction, opposition Disy said that there is a general “numbness” among the public over some “unfortunate” actions of the government and breaking of promises.

“In fact, some of those referred to as projects [by Christodoulides] are at the stage of being announced without a complete result (e.g. energy), while some others were already underway (e.g. those in the budget we voted last year and/or in the Recovery Fund), something very normal for such a short period of time,” they said.