If Sri Lanka ever needed proof that the civil service is not a spectator sport, it found it in P. B. Jayasundera.

Few public officials have shaped — and survived — as many administrations, economic turns, and political tempests as Dr. Jayasundera. Fewer still have done so while insisting, with a straight face, that they were merely “professionals doing their job”.

That, perhaps, is the paradox that will define his legacy.

The Treasury as a Command Post

Jayasundera was not a passive Treasury Secretary. He was an interventionist, a believer in executive authority, and a firm advocate of the idea that economics — not sentiment — should govern decision-making. Trained as an economist, he approached the Treasury less as a bookkeeping office and more as a command centre.

He served under multiple presidents, across ideological lines, which in Sri Lanka is either a mark of professional indispensability — or proof that neutrality has limits. His defenders say he provided continuity in a system addicted to disruption. His critics argue that continuity, in his case, came at the cost of accountability.

Both can be true.

The Professional Who Became the System

In theory, the Sri Lankan civil service prizes anonymity and restraint. Jayasundera rewrote that convention. He became the face of the Treasury, the public explainer, the internal enforcer, and at times the lightning rod.

Policy choices associated with him — fiscal tightening, aggressive state involvement in strategic sectors, and an unapologetic belief in top-down economic management — shaped Sri Lanka’s post- war economic posture. So did his comfort with power.

This is where the controversy begins.

Critics argue that Jayasundera blurred the line between technocracy and politics. Court battles, institutional clashes, and accusations of overreach followed him like footnotes. He was suspended, reinstated, criticised, and yet repeatedly recalled — the bureaucratic equivalent of being sacked and rehired because no one else quite knows where the files are kept.

In Sri Lanka, that is not uncommon. What is uncommon is how openly he occupied that space.

Was He Right — Or Just Certain?

The most persistent criticism of Jayasundera is not that he lacked competence, but that he lacked doubt.

He believed in scale. He believed in state direction. He believed Sri Lanka could grow faster if decisions were centralised and dissent managed. For a time, this aligned neatly with political ambition. When growth faltered and debt mounted, the same certainty became a liability.

Yet it would be dishonest to pin Sri Lanka’s eventual economic collapse on one technocrat — no matter how powerful. Jayasundera did not create political populism. He did not invent fiscal indiscipline. He did not author the culture of postponing hard choices.

What he did do was enable a system that preferred execution over debate — and certainty over caution.

The Civil Servant’s Dilemma

History will likely judge Jayasundera through a harder lens than his contemporaries did.

He was, undeniably, a formidable administrator. He understood the machinery of government better than most. He could translate political desire into bureaucratic action with ruthless efficiency.

But the civil service ideal is not merely efficiency. It is judgement — knowing when to push back, when to slow down, and when to tell power that it is wrong.

On that measure, the record is mixed.

Serving many presidents is not, by itself, evidence of virtue. Sometimes it is evidence of adaptability. Sometimes of indispensability. Sometimes of proximity.

How History Is Likely to Remember Him

Dr. P. B. Jayasundera will not be remembered as a footnote. He will be remembered as a central character in Sri Lanka’s economic story of the last two decades — for better and for worse.

He will be credited with professionalism, discipline, and intellectual firepower.

He will also be associated with a style of governance that concentrated power, sidelined institutional checks, and mistook decisiveness for infallibility.

In the end, history is rarely kind to technocrats who become too comfortable with politics — or to politicians who hide behind technocrats.

Jayasundera stood at that intersection longer than most.

Whether that makes him a stabilising force or a cautionary tale will depend less on how he defended his decisions — and more on how Sri Lanka learns from them.

And that, in a country still allergic to institutional self-reflection, remains the hardest test of all.