House of Rerpresentatives' Commission IX on labor and health affairs postponed a hearing with Health Minister Endang Rahayu Sedyaningsih on Monday as she was unprepared to respond to barbed questions from commission members.
The hearing was adjourned until Tuesday to allow time for the controversial minister to prepare herself.
"We suspended the hearing because the minister was not prepared. It's better to delay the hearing rather than have her bombarded with interruptions and aggresive questions from commission members," commission chairwoman Ribka Tjiptaning said as quoted by detik.com.
The hearing, originally scheduled for Oct. 28, was delayed following an intervention from House Speaker Marzuki Alie who unilaterally delayed it since the minister was only a week into her tenure and was considered unprepared.
The commission, which was prepared with numerous questions regarding Endang's track record and her research cooperation with the United States, was disappointed with Marzuki's interference, with Ribka saying the House speaker had no authority to prevent the commission members from performing their job.
Endang's late appointment as minister has been hounded by controversy since its announcement due to her previous role beneath former health minister Siti Fadillah who moved her to another job at the Health Ministry after she allegedly sold virus samples to the United States for laboratory research in Vietnam.
Ribka said that Monday's hearing had not been constructive from the time it started at around 10 a.m.
"*The minister* had something else on her mind, she seemed so unprepared. If she needs help from her directorate general, what's the point? When it comes to policies, the minister herself must explain," she added.
Endang was scheduled to attend a meeting with Yudhoyono in the afternoon.
During Monday's hearing, legislators threw 37 questions at the minister but the she managed to answer only a few of them before Ribka decided to put the hearing on hold at 4.15 p.m., three hours over schedule.
Endang said she wanted to respond with answers, which "the public has been waiting for", to the legislators' questions regarding the case of the chicken farmers in Sukabumi, West Java.
The farmers had previously asked for transparency of laboratory results from blood samples, which were taken in a test in 2007. Endang was then head of the research and development center at the ministry that organized the test.
Commission member Rieke Dyah Pitaloka from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) said the blood sampling was not conducted under correct procedures. (adh)
