MOSCOW: A top aide to Dmitry Medvedev on Friday said that he believed the Russian president would like to serve a second term after his mandate expires in 2012.
“I believe he does,” Kremlin economic adviser Arkady Dvorkovich told the BBC when asked whether Medvedev wanted another term in the Kremlin.
“I think that from what anyone can see when they look at what President Medvedev does, he believes that President Medvedev wants to continue his term and continue the agenda he started in 2008,” Dvorkovich said in the English-language interview. Medvedev has so far refused to say definitively whether he will run in an election that may also be contested by his current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
In his latest comments on the election, Medvedev told the Polish media that he would like to ensure “continuity”. But he said other “colleagues could also accomplish that objective” and that the time had not yet come to make up his mind.
“These things are done at the moment when it is necessary to do them,” Medvedev said in the interview, which coincides with his official visit to Poland. “I also have other colleagues who can take part in this political process,” he noted.
“Thus I believe that the main thing is to preserve a continuity in the authorities and a continuity in policies. But of course I do not exclude that I will do this work and this is normal for any politician.” Dvorkovich said he could not rule out that Putin — who has already served two terms as president but who is allowed to serve again under a constitutional loophole — would return to the Kremlin.
But he said that Medvedev appears eager to run himself.
“As both of them have told the public many times, I’m not excluding anything for 2012,” Dvorkovich said, according ot a transcript of the interview.
“And given their constructive relationships and friendship they will sit and consult with each other about who should go for the elections. They didn’t take the final decision yet.
“From what I heard from President Medvedev, he’s not excluding the opportunity he will go for the elections and certainly he wants to do that.”
