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(Right to left) The witness and expert presented by the Government. Akmal Taher, Refly Harun, and Herkutanto each gave their testimony in the trial of material review of Medical Practice Law on Wednesday (2/8) in the Plenary Hall of the Constitutional Court Building. Photo by Humas/Ganie.

The follow-up hearing of the judicial review of Law Number 29 Year 2004 regarding Medical Practice and Law Number 20 Year 2003 on Medical Education was held again by the Constitutional Court (MK) on Wednesday (2/8). The agenda of the hearing of case Number 10/PUU-XV/2017 was to hear the statement of expert and witness presented by the Government.

Constitutional Law Specialist Refly Harun mentioned the existence of the Indonesian Doctors Association (IDI) as a professional organization. According to him, IDI had a monopoly upstream to downstream, namely as maker and implementer of regulations in the field of medicine.

"In the perspective of the state, only state institutions have the authority of monopoly. Even that still requires checks and balances process," he explained in a hearing led by Chairman of the Constitutional Court, Arief Hidayat.

Meanwhile, Refly asserted that IDI was not a state organization so it could not have a monopoly. Moreover, according to him, IDI is an organization that was born from the community so its role must be supervised and state organization logic did not apply to it.

"In addition, I consider that IDI should not be the only medical organization. This refers to Article 1 number 20 of the Medical Education Law. The article mentions a professional organization, but it does not specifically mention IDI. This means that it is possible for other professional organizations than IDI to be established," he explained as an expert presented by the Government.

Meanwhile, a lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine of University of Indonesia Herkutanto assessed that the association system of medical profession in Indonesia needed to be reviewed. The reason was that, for the last 10 years, there had been five judicial reviews related to the Medical Practice Law. "It means that there needs to be a further review of the existing systems and actors," he explained.

In other countries, he explained, the relation between the collegium and the association tended to complement each other. This is in contrast to Indonesia, where both tend to overlap so that both do not run effectively. In addition, according to him, the collegium had not been known in Indonesia since the Dutch era. The collegium was founded in 1967, after the IDI was founded in 1950. "There is an ahistorical understanding of the function of the collegium," he asserted.

Akmal Taher as a witness presented by the Government explained about IDI\\\'s experience in the process of draft government regulation (RPP) on Primary Healthcare Physicians (DLP). Chairman of RPP DLP working unit (Pokja) clarified that, in the beginning, IDI agree with the DLP program. However, after a while, IDI changed its attitude. "Initially, the IDI congress refused to discuss DLP. Then, a month later, the Constitutional Court declared that DLP did not contradict the Constitution," he explained.

After that moment, he continued, IDI then withdrew from the discussion of RPP DLP. They also boycotted DLP socialization conducted by the Ministry of Health. According to him, there was a letter that mandated the Indonesian Medical Collegium to be absent on the agenda.

"On the other hand, the government still requires IDI to validate RPP DLP as it still requires IDI’s approval. However, IDI are pulling away," he said.

The Petitioners are three doctors, namely Judilherry Justam, Nurdadi Saleh, and Pradana Soewondo. The Petitioners requested the review of Article 1 number 4, number 12, number 13, and Article 14 paragraph (1) point a, Article 29 paragraph (3) point d, and Article 38 paragraph (1) point c on Medical Practice Law. The Petitioners also requested the review of Article 24 paragraph (1), Article 36 paragraph (3), and Article 39 paragraph (2) of the Medical Education Law.

According to the Petitioners, IDI’s authority in the issuance of competency certificate and medical license recommendation makes IDI a super-body and gives it superpower. They considered a possibility that it could encourage misuse of authority and disregard of the existing laws.

In addition, the Petitioners stated that there was no need for a competency certificate from the Indonesian Physicians Collegium (KDI), which was established by IDI. Therefore, every graduate of the Faculty of Medicine who had passed the competency test in accordance with Article 36 paragraph (3) of the Medical Education Law would get a professional certificate in the form of a doctor\'s diploma.

(ars/lul/Yuniar Widiastuti)

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