Missing out of action

The CPI(M) couldn’t have hit a worse patch. It is on the back foot over Nandigram, before the violence in Kolkata violence dented its reputation. Then its own Left Front allies criticised it for the handling of Taslima Nasreen, leaving its credentials on minority welfare threatened, if not exposed. Amid all this, party General Secretary Prakash Karat seemed strangely missing from the scene. It so happens that the most vocal and rigid of all comrades is on a tour to Vietnam. Building on his reputation of an international America baiter (who can ignore his opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal?), Karat met his Vietnamese counterpart General Secretary Nong Duc Manh in Hanoi on November 19 and discussed the need to “strengthen party to party relations”. The five days he was away spared Karat the trouble of indulging in verbal calisthenics like his fellow comrades had to do in Parliament and across the country.