LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

William Wordsworth, in his famous poem “The Rainbow” used the expression “Child is the father of man”, which means that all positive and negative traits are established when we are young. In Sri Lanka we are familiar with the saying “Like Father, Like Son” and there is also a colloquial Sinhala saying which says “If one is not his father’s son, then he should be “Nottige Putha”! (No one knows who or what Notti means but some have interpreted it as a corrupted word which originally meant “Not Ugay Putha”)


In our political scene, we have seen many offsprings of powerful politicians behaving as if they came down from heaven – in certain cases, even outsmarting their own fathers in their antics. We have just heard of a son of an infamous minister assaulting an army Major but getting away due to the influence of his father thus making it a “Minor” issue. Then we have a case of a son of another Minister getting away after creating trouble in his college whilst the other children who were with him getting punished b y the Principal, but sparing this particular young man due to threats from his influential father, who even went to the extent of getting his minions to buy out all newspapers and sent out coupons to make his son a School Boy Cricketer of the year!.

Some Ministers have even sent away their sons out of the country in order to keep them subdued as they had become uncontrollable. The funny thing is that most of these offsprings assume the powers and influence wielded by their fathers to engage in many nefarious activities in the firm belief that their fathers will rescue them from whatever chaos they create.

These politician fathers are in fact giving a bad example by “rescuing” their offsprings using their influence and powers without realizing that in doing so they unwittingly put their children into more jeopardy making them thoroughly undisciplined and a burden on the society.

Perhaps, they believe that such buffoonery on the part of their children qualify them to become future politicians – Like father, like son.