MANILA – After Hong Kong’s ex-security chief and now lawmaker Regina Ip referred to some Filipino domestic helpers as ‘marriage wreckers,’ the Malacañang was quick to defend them saying that they were ‘trusted people who do a very noble job of providing care to other people’s families.’
“I have received complaints from expatriate women… that Filipino domestic helpers seduce their husband,” Ip claimed in her op-ed article published in Ming Pao, a Chinese-language newspaper in Hong Kong.
“Rather than reporting improper behavior by local employers, should we pay more attention to Filipino maids becoming sexual resources for foreign men in Hong Kong?,” she added, asking why the international media seemed to report more about abuses committed by employers and none about the alleged illicit relationships.
Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda asserted that Ip’s statements were ‘obviously not true’ and said that ‘the Filipinos who are working there are doing a very noble job of providing and taking care of their little ones.’
“I think that that lawmaker, by using just one example and to conclude that Filipino domestic workers are all home wreckers is certainly fallacious, is certainly unfair to the many, many Filipinos who have given their own personal lives, given up their own family lives here in the Philippines to serve and help the families of others,” he said.
Lacierda also regarded Ip’s comments as a ‘classic example of inductive reasoning,’ which led to ‘fallacious conclusions.’
“You use one specific example and then you conclude in the general. Sometimes when you use inductive reasoning, it lends itself to fallacious conclusions… I do hope that the lawmaker would realize that she should not engage in inductive reasoning, especially in a situation where only one anecdotal experience was recounted and immediately conclude that Filipinos are home wreckers. That is a very unfair conclusion,” he said.
“If you look at it from our side, from our point of view, those of us who are detached, those of us who are here in the Philippines, the statement of the lawmaker certainly, was totally unfair to all of the Filipino workers and it is but natural for our Filipino workers who, labor day-in and day-out, in-season and out-of-season to help the families of the Hong Kong Chinese. It certainly gives them justification to feel aggrieved, to feel insulted,” he added.
The Malacañang, however, maintained that it was up to the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to take legal actions regarding the issue.