By The Anchor Team
The correspondence exchanged between Machakos Governor Wavinya Ndeti and County Assembly Speaker Anne Kiusya on September 1 carried the language of consultation but recorded the extent to which relations between the two institutions had deteriorated.
Both letters were dated September 1, 2026, and headed “RE: CONSULTATIVE MEETING.”
In the first, Governor Wavinya invited the Assembly leadership and all Members of the County Assembly to her office the following morning at 10am.
The letter was brief. Beyond the customary greeting and invitation, it made no reference to the confrontation at the Assembly premises the previous day, when the Governor arrived with county officials and journalists to deliver her memorandum on the Sh17.8 billion Appropriation Bill.
The Speaker’s response placed that confrontation at the centre of the proposed talks.
Kiusya acknowledged the invitation but said the Governor and members of her team had entered the Assembly premises and “harassed and disrupted” officers performing their duties.
“In view of the foregoing incident and the prevailing circumstances,” she wrote, the Assembly considered it inappropriate to attend the meeting.
The Speaker did not rule out future discussions. She said the Assembly remained committed to constructive engagement, provided it took place in an environment that respected institutional independence, safety and dignity.
The Assembly leadership would first consult internally before proposing another date, she added, “should the circumstances permit.”
The exchange revealed that the disagreement was no longer limited to the allocations contained in the county budget.
While the Governor sought a meeting on how to proceed, the Speaker maintained that the conduct of the Executive at the Assembly premises had to be addressed before discussions could take place.
The invitation assumed that the two institutions could proceed to talks. The response made clear that the Assembly did not consider the conditions for those talks to exist.
A dispute over the terms of engagement
The letters followed an extraordinary confrontation at the County Assembly on August 31.
Governor Wavinya had gone to the Assembly premises after what she described as unsuccessful attempts by officers from the Executive to deliver the Appropriation Bill and her accompanying memorandum.
She confronted County Assembly Clerk Peter Mbatha and demanded that he receive and stamp the documents. The Clerk eventually accepted them.
The Governor’s memorandum objected to amendments made by the Assembly to spending proposals totalling Sh853.96 million. The affected areas included garbage collection, the Machakos Youth Service, bursaries, the Wikwatyo Fund, sub-county offices, roads, the Governor’s Cup and the county revenue-management system.
The following day, Speaker Kiusya declared the memorandum inadmissible and returned it to the Governor without referring it to Assembly committees or placing it before the House for consideration.
That decision has raised a separate question about whether the Speaker can prevent a Governor’s memorandum from proceeding to the Assembly.
Section 24 of the County Governments Act provides that a Governor may return a Bill with a memorandum outlining the reasons for the referral. The Assembly may then amend the Bill in response or pass it again without accommodating the Governor’s objections.
The provision does not expressly establish an admissibility process through which the Speaker may reject the memorandum before it reaches the House.
Against that background, the proposed consultative meeting could not be separated from the dispute over the memorandum or the events surrounding its delivery.
The Governor’s letter treated consultation as the next step. The Speaker’s response indicated that restoring a workable relationship between the two institutions had become a prior condition.
From the meeting room to the street
After the Assembly declined the invitation, the political contest moved outside the institutions.
The Governor called supporters from across the county to a day-long demonstration around the county headquarters. Organisers sought 100 people from each ward.
Armed police cordoned off the Assembly premises as supporters gathered around the county headquarters and near two banks in Machakos town.
The mobilisation changed the setting of the dispute. What had begun with competing budget estimates and legal interpretations was now being presented before a public audience.
The Assembly had declined the meeting on grounds that included the safety and dignity of its officers. The Governor, rather than immediately proposing a different venue or format for talks, turned to supporters to press her case publicly.
That development risks making a negotiated settlement more difficult. Once the dispute shifts from correspondence and committee rooms to public mobilisation, compromise can be portrayed by either side as retreat.
It also sharpens the contest over institutional authority.
The Governor maintains that the Assembly unlawfully altered essential programmes and exceeded statutory limits governing changes to budget ceilings. The Assembly says it redirected money away from programmes it considers unsupported by adequate legal and accountability frameworks.
Those objections would ordinarily be examined through the statutory process for considering a Governor’s memorandum. The Speaker’s refusal to table the memorandum has prevented that process from beginning.
The Assembly has urged the Governor to assent to the Bill and pursue any additional allocations through a Supplementary Budget. The Governor has already declined to assent and formally returned the Bill for reconsideration.
The result is a budget dispute in which each institution is now contesting not only the other’s decisions, but also the procedure through which the disagreement should be resolved.
The September 1 letters captured that breakdown with unusual clarity. The Governor invited the Assembly to discuss the way forward without addressing the confrontation of the previous day. The Speaker declined, insisting that future engagement would depend on respect for the Assembly’s independence and the safety of its officers.
Both sides used the language of consultation. Neither accepted the other’s terms for beginning it.
By the following day, the meeting had been replaced by a street demonstration and a police cordon around the Assembly.
The letters did not begin the Machakos budget confrontation, but they placed its institutional breakdown on record.
