Who is the real Suriyapperuma?

By: Robinhood
April 28, LNW (Colombo): Sri Lanka’s Treasury Secretary holds one of the most consequential appointments in the country. He controls public expenditure, steers fiscal policy, and sits at the nerve centre of the national economy. The public has an absolute right to know who he is. With Harshana Suriyapperuma, that question remains disturbingly unanswered.

Today, the cabinet spokesperson Minister Nalinda Jayatissa was asked directly whether the Treasury Secretary holds dual citizenship. He could not confirm that Suriyapperuma does not. That is not a minor communications failure. If the Treasury Secretary is a dual citizen and has not disclosed that to Parliament, he has misled the legislature of the country whose finances he manages and he should not have been appointed to the parliament as a national list MP prior to his resignation to accept the treasury top job. That is not a technicality. That is a disqualification. It’s all about integrity.

The citizenship question sits alongside deeper concerns about Suriyapperuma’s professional and academic credentials. His complete profile is not published anywhere. His educational qualifications have been questioned. He is not, by any credible account, an economist. For a position that demands institutional mastery of fiscal architecture, monetary coordination, and sovereign debt management, that absence of foundation is not a minor gap. It is a structural problem.

Consider his four immediate predecessors. Dr. P.B. Jayasundara. Dr. R.H.S Samaratunga, S.R. Attygala. Mahinda Siriwardena. Each arrived at the position with deep Treasury or Central Banking experience. Each had publicly verifiable careers. Each was a product of the institution they were appointed to lead. Their backgrounds were known, vetted, and professionally coherent.

Suriyapperuma was a parachute appointment dropped into the role from outside the institutional architecture that produces credible Treasury secretaries. Parachutes, when they are not properly constructed, do not slow descent. They accelerate it.

The parachute has burst. Suriyapperuma is in free fall. And in that position, he is not falling alone. He is taking the country’s fiscal credibility down with him.

The cabinet cannot hide behind an unanswered question about citizenship. The government cannot continue treating the Treasury Secretary’s background as a private matter. The public, the Parliament, and the markets that price Sri Lanka’s sovereign risk all deserve a complete, verified, and honest account of who is sitting in that chair.

If that account cannot be provided, the chair should be vacated.