Flag link doesnot appear in minipanel

Following the tutorial given here http://drupal.org/node/295383#comment-4802456 I am trying to get a flag link to appear in a minipanel that I am placing in the block region. The code I am placing as a custom content is :
<?php print flag_create_link('recommend', %node:nid); ?>
The name of the flag I am trying to create is recommend. I followed the rest of the steps given in the tutorial and placing the same link inside a panel page works very nicely.
In the minipanel however the link doesnot appear instead this message appears.
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ')' in /var/www/html/is/isocenter.org/modules/php/php.module(80) : eval()'d code on line 1

I also tried to place the flag link token in the same region but that also doesnot work (but the link token does work nicely in the panel page which is being used to style the content).

Interestingly I dont know if this is related but I also attempted to substitute the title with Recommended by %node:flag-recommend-count as given in the substitution patterns section but the number of times the node has been flagged doesnot appear.
Any pointers on how to get this resolved will be appreciated.
N.B. For the minipanel the required context is given as NodeID