Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra is due to make a major public address on Thursday in which she will outline her cabinet's achievements in the past three months and assert the need for the government's flagship policies in the year to come.
These policies include the digital money handout scheme, the village fund and various economic stimulus measures, the PM wrote in a post made on Facebook and repeated on X on Sunday.
Titled "2025 Empowering Thais: A Real Possibility", the public address will begin at 10am live on NBT2HD and be streamed on the state-run TV channel's Facebook page as well, she said.
The venue for the event, to be attended by around 500 guests, is the headquarters of the National Broadcasting Services of Thailand (NBT) on Vibhavadi Rangsit Road, said the PM.
Cabinet ministers, high-level ministerial officials, department heads, division heads, provincial governors, armed forces' leaders, the national police chief, ministerial spokespeople and heads of state enterprises are expected to be among the attendees.
A new opinion poll conducted by Suan Dusit Poll, meanwhile, found most Thais are now looking forward to receiving more cash handouts and seeing more measures to help curb their living costs, in what is often perceived as a tradition of New Year gifts from the government.
These findings reflect how seriously most people are being affected by the global economic situation, said Pornpan Buathong, president of the Suan Dusit Poll.
"The impact of the sluggish economy now is holding back festive spending after the survey found that only 56.02% of poll respondents intended to travel over New Year," said Asst Prof Unchalee Rattana, a political science lecturer with Suan Dusit University.
In another development, Prime Minister's Office Minister Chousak Sirinil said the Pheu Thai Party is now ready to submit its political amnesty bill as soon as the House of Representatives' session resumes on Dec 12.
The essence of its bill is that all those prosecuted in politically motivated cases from 2005 up until now should be eligible for an amnesty, he said.
The final decision in each instance will be made by a formal amnesty committee, while there will also be a clear list of offences to which this amnesty bill will apply when passed into law, he said. Details of who will make up the committee have yet to be fleshed out.
As for the constitutional referendum bill, Pheu Thai has resolved to reassert the Lower House stipulation requiring only a simple majority to make passage of the matter easier before the next election.
This will mean the bill will have to be suspended for 180 days before the Lower House can veto changes made by the Senate.
Passed by the House in August, the bill was rejected by the higher chamber, prompting a joint House-Senate committee to be formed to find a way to mend their differences in a bid to forge unity over what has been a controversial topic.
The government, opposition and Senate whips are being encouraged to find common ground before any further move towards setting up a new charter drafting assembly can begin, he said.
On Friday, House Speaker Wan Muhammad Noor Matha said a meeting of the three whips is scheduled to take place on Friday to discuss when deliberation of the charter-amending bills should begin.
However, not all 17 bills will be deliberated, with only those deemed urgent given a priority, he said.
A survey conducted by Nida Poll, meanwhile, showed an extremely small difference between the percentage of poll respondents who support charter amendments (27.63%) and those who don't believe it necessary (27.02%).
More importantly, the vast majority of these respondents (78.97%) said if the charter is to be amended, only certain parts of it should be touched, not the entire document, according to the poll conducted on Dec 2-3 on 1,310 people in all regions of the country.