The Left that dare not speak its name?

Something struck me as a bit odd after my last post - the BBC seems to be having trouble with the fact that Demetris Christofias, the incoming president of Cyprus, is a communist. They seem to have adopted a strangely bland circumlocution: "a left-wing leader" ; "left-winger...leader of the Greek Cypriot communist party" ; "Left-wing Cypriot leader Demetris Christofias...who heads the communist AKEL party". Some other quarters have a similar aversion - USA Today, awkwardly, call him "communist-rooted".But other outlets don't seem to have the same reticence at all - CNN, al-Jazeera and Reuters, for example.

Of course, Christofias isn't a "proper" communist - the IHT explains why, although the Cyprus Weekly draws direct parallel with Moldova, the only other European country with a communist head of state - and the original Communist party was banned in Cyprus to be replaced by AKEL, the Progressive Party of the Working People - but I was wondering if there is some kind of BBC aversion to the label, as if the only communists we can imagine in the West are Stalinists or human rights abusers. Interesting.

(Talking of image, AKEL themselves don't seem too shy about it!)