Hundreds of people marched through Hong Kong’s streets Sunday in protest over the leader’s policy speech which failed to address the housing crisis and poverty in the city.

Protesters said Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying lacked new ideas to solve the city’s pressing issues in his January policy speech, igniting public “disappointment and anger”.

“Leung Chun-ying does not have the heart or the ability to solve the problems for the Hong Kong people,” Icarus Wong, vice-convener of one of the protest organizers, Civil Human Rights Front, told AFP.

About 1,000 people held banners, some of which portrayed Leung as a vampire and Pinocchio, and demanded universal suffrage in the former British colony.

Leung who was chosen by a 1,200-member Beijing-backed election committee, saw his popularity plunge to 31% as thousands of people called for the leader to quit and demanded for greater democracy at the start of the year.

Beijing vowed that the city’s chief executive could be directly elected by 2017 at the earliest, followed by the legislature by 2020, AFP reports.