IT’S all so very quiet. It’s very much in contrast with the emotionalism that characterized the execution of Filipina maid Flor Contemplacion in Singapore for killing her ward and a fellow maid in mid-1990s. It is very far from the media “circus” that attended the abduction in Iraq last July of Angelo dela Cruz, the Filipino truck driver who was taken by Iraq militants while he was driving an oil delivery from Kuwait to Baghdad. Dela Cruz was spared beheading after the Philippine government had caved in to the demand of the Iraqi militants for the Philippines to withdraw its small humanitarian contingent ahead of schedule. But it also earned for the Arroyo administration the ire of the United States, Australia and other allies in the “coalition of the willing” that invaded Iraq. The Philippines was subsequently ousted from the coalition.

This time we have another Filipino, Angelito Nayan, 34, as hostage in Afghanistan. He was on six-month leave from his desk job at the Department of Foreign Affairs and had volunteered to the United Nations group that oversaw Afghanistan’s first presidential election last October 9. It was the second time Angelito did it. He had also volunteered to the UN in the Kosovo election in 2001.