Anastasiades lambasts Christodoulides in podcast interview

Former President Nicos Anastasiades lambasted his successor Nikos Christodoulides in a podcast interview, criticising the latter’s style of governance and his disassociation of himself from the former’s government.

Christodoulides had served as Anastasiades’ government spokesman between 2014 and 2018 and then as his foreign minister between 2018 and 2022, and with this in mind, Anastasiades criticised his successor’s criticism of him.

“You can’t say the whole thing is null and void. Those ten years were ten years of creativity and reconstitution for the state,” he told the ‘Tsouroullis Uncensored’ podcast, referring to the ten years he spent as president between 2013 and 2023.

He criticised Christodoulides’ use of the phrase “for the first time”, saying this phrase is “something which can be said by someone who was not in government in recent years,” and also expressed his displeasure with Christodoulides’ stance on a number of government projects which have seen their contracts cancelled in recent months.

The contract for the road between Paphos and Polis Chrysochous and the contract for the development of the Liopetri river were both torn up by the government on Tuesday, while contracts for both the Vasiliko liquefied natural gas terminal and the Larnaca marina were terminated earlier in the year.

Anastasiades said on the podcast that Christodoulides has “allowed it to leak” that the various issues with the contracts and projects in question are “problems which were bequeathed by the previous government”, and also criticised a perceived lack of public appreciation on the part of his successor for him.

“When you inaugurate a project which was started by a government of which you were a part and has now been completed, you cannot go and advertise it as if it were your own. If he disagreed at any point, should he not have mentioned his disagreement? What does this mean for the pending projects? Those which have been completed or are being completed now, are they just for the ribbons?”

To this end, he said that in his first years as president, when he would inaugurate completed projects started under his predecessor, late President Demetris Christofias, he would explicitly state that it was his predecessor who had started the projects.

“I’m sorry to speak like this but at some point morality must prevail. When I succeeded Demetris Christofias, wherever I found myself inaugurating a project, I said I was there as part of my institutional responsibility, and the project belonged to my predecessor,” he said.

Anastasiades’ comments come amid the various projects’ cancellations, with Transport Minister Alexis Vafeades having not minced his words regarding who he finds to be at fault.

“Those who designed this offer, those who approved this offer, obviously in a way which presented particular problems, bear responsibility. It is not the first time that we see this weakness,” he said while visiting Polis Chrysochous.