MOSCOW, January 27 (Itar-Tass) – Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev does not rule out he might continue his political career after his premiership is over.
“I have never said that life ends, say, in 2012,” he said in an interview with the CNN television channel. “I have a very interesting job now: I work as Prime Minister. It implies serious work. And as long as I feel fit enough I will do my job, I will do good for my country. Sooner or later I will have to take some other decisions, which I will surely square with people’s opinions and with my own views and wishes. So, I cannot rule out either a further political career or anything else.” But now, according to Medvedev, there is no point in any talk about this.
When asked why he did not run for a second presidential term, Medvedev said it was not right to stage a political struggle inside a single political force. “What I was supposed to do? To plunge into rivalry with my close colleague, with my friend? What for? Can you imagine a struggle like that in a single political force? I believe we acted in a responsible way at that moment,” he said.
He said that any talks about himself as a “moderate figure” were out of place, since Russian laws vest all the authority in the president, like it is in the United States. It is the president who has the entire arsenal of political instruments. “When I was president, some may believe it, some may be skeptical about it, but I possessed this very arsenal. But it in no way means that I was to use it in defiance of my own conceptions,” he said. “Now the president is Vladimir Putin, my friend and colleague.” He said he was sure the prime minister’s job was a vital job too. “Here we have no direct analogues with the United States. Russia’s prime minister is not a vice president, but in terms of competences the prime minister has he or she is more than a vice president, because under our constitution the prime minister is the head of the executive authority in charge of entire economy, social sphere, humanitarian problems, and a great variety of other issues,” he noted.
According to Medvedev, he has quite a lot of work. “Every day, I sign hundreds of documents, the responsibility for which rests entirely on me,” he said. “I can never say that the president ordered or someone else told me, in this sense, the job of the prime minister is absolutely interesting and self-sufficing. But as for the future – no one knows anything about the future. Time will show.”