Nicola Sturgeon has suggested she could stay on as an MSP for the next 20 years, saying she has a sense of “unfinished business” in her constituency.
In a wide ranging interview with a local community radio station, the former first minister also said she had no regrets over her bid to change Scotland’s gender recognition laws.
She also cautioned other politicians against “sucking up” to Donald Trump.
Ms Sturgeon has submitted her application to the party to be considered for the election and she has passed internal vetting.
However, there had been an expectation within the SNP that she would not contest the seat again and would announce her intention to stand down in the weeks ahead.
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The SNP hopes to have all of its candidates in place by the end of April.
When asked if she was going to stand again next year, Ms Sturgeon told the Bylines Scotland programme on Glad Radio: “I haven't decided yet. I'm still mulling it over and weighing it up.
“Being a member of the Scottish Parliament is a huge privilege. I've been fortunate to be in Holyrood since 1999 and it's a hard thing to voluntarily give up.
“On the other hand, that's a huge chunk of my life, and maybe it's time to give other people a chance.
“So these are the things I'm weighing up, but I've not yet come to a final decision.”
Speaking about her constituency and challenges around inequality and some of the projects she has been involved with, Ms Sturgeon added: "And I think if I whether I was to stand down soon or stay an MSP — with the consent of the people, obviously — for another 10 or 20, years, there's always going to be a sense of unfinished business, because you always want to see improvements in the lives of people you represent."
During the wide-ranging interview, the ex-SNP leader also hit out at some of her critics over the Gender Recognition Reform Bill.
MSPs backed the legislation by 86 votes to 39 in December 2022 on a cross-party basis.
The new law was supposed to speed up and simplify the process for a trans person to obtain a gender recognition certificate and change their legal sex, by scrapping the need for medical diagnosis and lowering the age threshold to 16.
It was blocked by the then Scottish Secretary Alister Jack who argued that it would have an adverse effect on the operation of UK-wide equality law.
Ms Sturgeon said it was “bunkum” to claim she had allowed “gender politics” to dominate quite a lot of her time in government.
She said: “If, by gender politics, people are including promoting gender equality, making sure women got a fair crack at the whip, making sure women were properly represented in my cabinet, that we were encouraging and pushing companies to make sure women were properly represented on their boards, or making sure that we were tackling misogyny and sexism, I will never apologise for trying to do that.
“Because sexism, misogyny, the many ways in which women don't get the same opportunities as men, is one of the biggest challenges we should take on as a society.
“If people are talking about trying to deliver greater dignity and respect for that tiny, tiny, tiny proportion of the population who are trans, I didn't spend much time quantitatively on that.
“But do I regret trying to reduce stigma and discrimination and trauma and heartache for that tiny number of people in our society? No, because one of the things that burns passionately in me is a belief in equality, a hatred of discrimination and prejudice.”
She said some of her “loudest critics on that issue” were the “ones who don't talk about anything else other than that issue.”
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Asked how the world should deal with Donald Trump, Ms Sturgeon said the leaders of other countries “can't simply turn away and not try to build relationships and deal with him”.
“But I think there is a careful balance that is going to have to be struck,” she added. “And where that balance is will be different and different issues and at different times over the course of his presidency, but that balance is between trying to engage and build relationships and do business in as normal a way as possible, but on the other hand, not kind of sucking up and going along with and not calling out the things that he is egregiously wrong on.
“And you listen to some world leaders right now, and everybody's falling over themselves to be nice to him. And there is a real need to stand up for important values.”
Ms Sturgeon said the world was in a “really, really worrying period right now".
“The human instinct is to say things won't be as bad as they seem, or things will be okay. It'll all work out. He, Donald Trump, won't be this monster that we all think he's going to be.
“But actually, I think we've got to be open eyed right now to the fact that on all sorts of things, things are pretty grim.”
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