The 72-day extraordinary Diet session opened Thursday. It will last until Dec. 1, which is unusually long for an extra session. The political schedule will be very tight in December: The government will compile a fiscal 2001 budget and lay the groundwork for the reorganization of the central bureaucracy into a Cabinet office and 12 ministries and agencies effective next Jan. 1. Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's Cabinet will have to be overhauled in December for the reform.

The extra Diet session will also face a host of difficult issues, beginning with a fiscal 2000 supplementary budget. In recent years, the government has annually compiled huge supplementary budgets featuring public-works spending of more than 10 trillion yen to push economic recovery. The government is now gearing up to prepare another extra budget of 10 trillion yen under the initiative of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's policy chief, Shizuka Kamei. However, amid strong public criticism of extravagant public-works spending, the question is to what extent the government will be able to curb spending. This is an important issue, which will have a powerful influence on the fiscal 2001 budget.

There are several important bills scheduled for deliberation in the session. One would ban influence peddling by lawmakers. Another would revise the Public Offices Election Law to introduce a new Upper House proportional-representation voting system and cut the number of seats in the chamber by 10. The new system would allow voters to choose either individual candidates or political parties when casting ballots, instead of just parties as at present.