Ignoring protests from the opposition bloc and pensioners, the ruling triumvirate on Tuesday rammed through an Upper House committee a package of bills that is supposed to save the nation's nearly bankrupt pension system.

The vote, which was not originally scheduled for Tuesday, was held after the committee held a public hearing and a question-and-answer session.

The controversial bills, which are intended to gradually curtail the benefits of income-proportional public pensions for salaried workers by 20 percent by 2025, is expected to clear the Upper House plenary session today.

Beginning at the start of fiscal 2000, or April 1, the planned legislation will reduce payments by 5 percent in the salary-linked portion of the "kosei-nenkin" pension scheme. Then, over a 25-year period beginning in 2013, it will gradually raise the minimum pensionable age from 60 to 65.

As the committee chairwoman, Liberal Democrat Yasu Kano, announced that the committee would be resumed shortly before 6 p.m. to put the bills to a vote, 100 opposition lawmakers rushed to the committee room where the extra show-of-hands session lasted no more than three minutes.

Immediately after the voting, the Upper House secretaries general of the three opposition parties -- the Democratic Party of Japan, the Japanese Communist Party and Social Democratic Party -- approached Upper House Speaker Juro Saito to protest the ruling camp's "high-handed" handling of the bills.

Representatives of the opposition parties later in the day jointly submitted to the Upper House a resolution to remove Kano from her post as committee chairwoman.

The opposition camp had demanded that the bills be scrapped, with Yukio Hatoyama, leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, calling the government-envisioned legislation an "unequaled bad law that could deprive a married couple of a total 10 million yen in their lifetime pension benefits."

In recent weeks, dozens of pensioners and labor union members have staged daily sit-ins before the Diet building, protesting against the pension reform bills.

Their protests have been so relentless that some LDP executives, who claim the protesters are almost "settling down on the sidewalk" before the Diet, mulled ways to remove them at an LDP meeting Tuesday morning.

The Diet was paralyzed when the tripartite ruling coalition forced the pension bills through a Lower House committee in November. At that time, Lower House Speaker Soichiro Ito ordered the bills sent back to the committee in an effort to ease the infuriated opposition.