?Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day yes­ter­day shrugged off crit­i­cisms lev­elled by his es­tranged par­ty deputy Jack Warn­er fol­low­ing Pan­day's meet­ing on Tues­day with Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.

Pan­day said: "When this coun­try has so many prob­lems from crime to roads and food prices to med­ical fa­cil­i­ties, I don't in­tend to deal with pe­riph­er­al mat­ters by peo­ple who are de­sirous of pow­er. I have no time for them. They're ir­rel­e­vant to T&T's pol­i­tics and should be tak­ing care of their con­stituen­cy. "I in­tend to deal with the na­tion­al is­sues–con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form and crime–so I have no an­swer for pow­er-seek­ers and arm­chair crit­ics.

Let them wal­low in their own filth. They have noth­ing else to do." Pan­day said UNC would mount a se­ries of meet­ings in vil­lages to ed­u­cate the pub­lic on Pro­por­tion­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tion and oth­er as­pects of UNC's con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form con­cept. Pan­day said he had no plans to go on walk­a­bouts. "Feel­ing up pump­kin and bha­gi in mar­kets don't win votes," Pan­day quipped.