COMMENTARY
By Martin Masai
There is a delicious irony in the raging Machakos budget war.
Governor Wavinya Ndeti now speaks of Speaker Anne Kiusya as though she were an obstacle that suddenly descended upon her administration.
Yet, by her own account, Kiusya did not simply appear in the Speaker’s chair.
Wavinya says she chose her.
She says Kiusya was brought to her by her friend and that she supported her.
Today, the two women are on opposite sides of one of the most consequential institutional confrontations Machakos County has witnessed.
According to the governor, the Speaker is blocking, questioning and reallocating parts of the Governor’s proposed expenditure in an assembly where her Wiper party has the majority.
In turn, the Governor is fighting back, returning the Assembly’s Appropriation Bill with a memorandum and taking her battle to the courts and the political arena.
It would be easy to reduce this to a personal feud between two powerful women.
That would, however, miss the bigger story.
The real question is what happens when an elected government proposes to spend public money and another elected institution says: prove to us that this money is legally authorised, properly accounted for and in the public interest.
That is the question Machakos should be asking.
The Speaker’s September 1 communication on the budget has now put some of the previously hidden details on the table.
The Assembly says it moved money away from Wikwatyo because the fund lacks the legislative and regulatory framework necessary to govern its utilisation.
It moved money earmarked for the Machakos Youth Service to TVET institutions, arguing that the latter have a more established institutional and legal foundation.
It shifted Sh30 million from bursaries to ECDE, a function assigned to county governments.
It moved money from major roads it considers national-government functions to roads it considers county responsibilities.
It questioned Sh90 million proposed for sub-county offices after, according to the Speaker, the Executive failed to justify the increase from a previous allocation of about Sh2.5 million that has been sufficient in the last four budgets.
It also challenged allocations for garbage collection contracts and the county revenue system.
These are not merely political arguments.
They are questions that can be tested against law, budget documents, procurement records, regulations and audit trails.
And that is precisely how they should be tested.
The Wikwatyo question
Of all the disputed allocations, Wikwatyo deserves particular scrutiny.
There is nothing wrong with a county government seeking to empower women and young people.
Indeed, economic empowerment is a legitimate public policy objective.
But the mechanism matters.
If hundreds of millions of shillings are to be channelled through a county programme, the public is entitled to know the law establishing it, the regulations governing it, the criteria for beneficiaries, the officials responsible for approving disbursements and the safeguards against political patronage.
And the timing matters too.
The county, like the rest of the country is approaching a general election where politicians are fundraising.
That does not establish that Wikwatyo was conceived as an electoral instrument, though it could actually be.
It does, however, make transparency and accountability even more important.
A programme distributing public resources to politically significant constituencies during an election year should expect more scrutiny, not less.
The Assembly’s position is essentially this: put the legal and regulatory framework in order before the money is released to you.
That is a legitimate question for the assembly to ask and the governor to answer.
If the Executive has the law, regulations and safeguards, it should publish them.
If it does not, it should explain why public money should be released first and the legal framework developed later – if at all.
The 50 per cent question
There is another important piece of the story that has been overshadowed by the political noise.
The Governor went to court and obtained orders relating to access to 50 per cent of the budget, yet the Assembly had already approved a 50 per cent vote-on-account arrangement before subsequently approving the full Sh17.797 billion budget.
That fact complicates the political narrative that the Assembly simply wanted to shut down the Governor’s government.
There was already provision for essential expenditure.
The argument was over the balance, the allocations and the conditions under which the remaining resources would be spent.
The court proceedings therefore form another chapter in what has become a contest over control of county finances. The same Judge- Josephine Mong’are is also handling another case revolving around the fate of Catherine Mutanu, the Finance Minister she ordered back to office and the assembly has disowned her.
The Anchor has also seen court orders issued by Justice Josephine Mong’are barring the Speaker from gazetting the approved budget.
That judicial intervention is significant because it moved the confrontation from the Assembly chamber into the courts.
By the way, the governor long lost the political party court for conflict resolution after the Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka dismissed the speaker with his fabled edict ” …Aende akiendanga”.
Wavinya is deploying the Court of public opinion simultaneously with the court of law.
But even court orders cannot answer the fundamental political and accountability questions that require urgent answers.
What should the money be spent on?
That remains a matter of public policy, law and accountability.
From budget disagreement to political rhetoric
It is unfortunate that the language surrounding the dispute now appears to be becoming increasingly personal.
Governor Ndeti has publicly urged MCAs to “let free the resources of Machakos people”, including remarks made in Mitaboni, Speaker Kiusya’s home area.
The Governor has also attacked Kiusya in terms that have invoked her county of origin- an attack that borders on hate speech for people of Kitui County. Incidentally, Kitui is also the home of Wiper leader and the stance is an indicator of how she probably views him.
However, this drift is a dangerous direction for a budget debate.
Machakos is a county of many communities, political loyalties and geographical identities.
A dispute over Sh17.8 billion cannot be allowed to degenerate into an argument about where a Speaker comes from.
If Kiusya is wrong, show where she is wrong. If the Assembly violated the law, identify the provision.
If its reallocations are illegal, take them to court. If the Governor’s budget is sound, publish the evidence and defend it.
But county of origin is not an argument about public finance.
It is certainly not a substitute for evidence.
The political elephant in the room
There is, however, a larger political question that neither side can avoid. Wikwatyo and youth empowerment programmes are politically attractive programmes.
They are designed to reach precisely the demographic groups that every politician wants on his or her side.
And we are heading towards an election. That does not make them illegitimate. But it means the public must demand exceptional safeguards.
The Governor should be able to demonstrate that beneficiaries are selected through objective criteria rather than political affiliation.
The Assembly should be able to demonstrate that its reallocations were not motivated by an attempt to cripple the Governor politically.
Both institutions should be subjected to the same standard.
Public interest.
Not political convenience.
Who actually lost?
There is an intriguing way of looking at the confrontation.
If Kiusya has indeed ruined anybody’s political plan, as the increasingly bitter rhetoric suggests, the question should not be whether she has frustrated the Governor.
The question should be: what exactly has been stopped?
Has essential service delivery been stopped?
Or has expenditure on programmes with disputed legal and accountability foundations been stopped or redirected?
Those are very different things.
If the Assembly has prevented public money from being channelled through programmes that lack adequate legal and regulatory safeguards, that is not necessarily an assault on development.
It could be precisely what oversight is supposed to do.
But if the Assembly has used its budget powers to frustrate legitimate county programmes merely to weaken the Governor politically, then it too must answer to the people.
The distinction can be established.
Follow the money.
Read the legislation.
Examine the regulations.
Inspect the procurement documents.
Check the beneficiaries.
Trace the payments.
That is where the truth lies.
The Governor’s dilemma
There is an irony in Wavinya’s present predicament.
The Speaker she says she helped install is now exercising one of the most consequential powers available to the Assembly: the power to scrutinise and alter the Executive’s proposed spending priorities within the confines of the law.
Perhaps the Governor did not expect the relationship to end here.
Perhaps the Speaker has exceeded her mandate.
Perhaps the Executive has underestimated the Assembly’s determination to exercise oversight.
Those are questions that should be answered by evidence, not speculation.
But one thing is clear.
The Assembly is not the Governor’s department.
And the Governor is not the Assembly’s employee.
They are separate constitutional institutions.
They are supposed to check each other.
They are supposed to disagree.
They are supposed to negotiate.
And when they cannot agree, the law provides mechanisms for resolution.
What they are not supposed to do is turn institutional disagreement into personal warfare, ethnic insinuation or political intimidation.
Machakos needs its budget.
Hospitals need money.
Garbage needs collecting.
Roads need maintaining.
Schools need supporting.
Workers need paying.
Businesses need a functioning county administration.
Citizens do not care which political faction wins the argument.
They care whether their money is properly spent.
So let Governor Wavinya publish the case for every contested programme.
Let Speaker Kiusya publish the case for every reallocation.
Let the courts determine questions of law where the two institutions disagree.
And let the auditors follow the money.
Because the Sh17.8 billion in dispute does not belong to Wavinya.It does not belong to Kiusya.It does not belong to the MCAs.
It belongs to the people of Machakos. Public money should never become the prize in a political war.
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