After filing theft complaint, Villarin wants Paras banned from House
Akbayan Rep. Tom Villarin has asked the House of Representatives to censure and ban Labor Undersecretary Jacinto “Jing‘ Paras from entering House premises because of his theft complaint against the latter.
“Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, I stand here seeking your support to express our disdain to a very indecent act of a public official which can be a grave misconduct that our Ombudsman can investigate so that he may be served with a preventive suspension,” Villarin said during his privilege speech during the plenary session on Wednesday.
“Mr. Speaker, I seek your support to have Undersecretary Paras be censured by the House and be banned from entering our premises until full redress of my grievances have been settled,” he added.
Earlier, Villarin recounted the incident, caught on closed circuit television (CCTV) footage, when Paras allegedly “snatched‘ his iPhone X worth P74,000 at a Congressional hearing last March.
He the sued Paras fort theft at the Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office on Monday.
READ: Rep. Villarin files theft charges vs DOLE Usec Jing Paras
Villarin branded Paras as an indecent man for “accusing me of putting political color in my coming out to the public.”
“While he did not deny taking away my phone and telling us that he might have accidentally taken it with him, a decent person’s instinct would be to personally talk to me and say how sorry he was,” he pointed out.
“A decent man could have called his aide to look for whoever owns that phone or retrace his steps and memory to find the owner who, at that very moment, must be frantically searching for it,” Villarin continued. “A decent man will ask the proper authorities at that very moment to help him restore what was lost to someone. A decent man would have felt bad to himself that even accidentally, he has caused a wrong to another person. But sad to say, Mr. Paras is not a decent man.”
Villarin said Paras might have done this because he was with the opposition and “any information gathered on me can be used against me or my party-mate Sen. Risa Hontiveros.‘
“Before he became undersecretary, Paras was with the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption who filed kidnapping and anti-wiretapping charges against Senator Hontiveros over the Kian delos Santos murder, when Senator Hontiveros and Bishop Pablo David took into their protective custody children who witnessed the murder,” he added.
Aside from asking the House to condemn and ban Paras, Villarin also requested a complete video recording of the whole incident that he can use as evidence in court.
Paras had already dismissed all these allegations as malicious and political.
“Tom Villarin’s accusation against me is incredible,” he said. “I have not stolen his cell phone. This accusation is malicious and has political color.” /atm
