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The Yomiuri Shimbun A plenary session of the House of Councillors, at which chairs for standing committees were chosen, is held as part of the extraordinary Diet session that began Thursday.
The Yomiuri Shimbun
17:04 JST, November 28, 2024
The first Diet debate to be held after the House of Representatives election in October kicked off Thursday, as the 216th extraordinary session of the Diet was convened.
The ruling coalition bloc of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito lost its majority in the lower house in the election. It is expected to seek the cooperation of the Democratic Party for the People, to do its upmost to pass a fiscal 2024 supplementary budget bill that would support the government’s comprehensive economic package.
The session will run for 24 days through Dec. 21.
“We will carefully listen to the opinions of each party, based on election results, to steer Diet business,” Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told reporters Thursday morning in the Prime Minister’s Office.
In the House of Councillors, standing committee chairs were chosen at a plenary session in the morning.
An opening ceremony will be held Friday with the Emperor in attendance, followed by Ishiba delivering a policy speech at plenary sessions of both chambers. Representatives from the ruling and opposition parties will ask questions from Monday to Wednesday, and both chambers’ budget committees will hold a meeting on Dec. 5-6 attended by the prime minister and all Cabinet ministers.
Deliberations on the supplementary budget are expected to begin sometime after next week.
The main topics of debate are likely a revision of the “annual income barrier of ¥1.03 million” — the level from which income tax must be paid — and revision of the Political Funds Control Law. The Deliberative Council on Political Ethics is expected to examine LDP members who failed to document funds in their political funds reports.
Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker Jun Azumi chairs the lower house Budget Committee, so attention is focused on how deliberations will proceed under the opposition party-led committee.
CDPJ leader Yoshihiko Noda said Thursday at a party meeting, “We will show the people through Diet activities what would happen as a result of having driven the LDP and Komeito below a majority.”
