WHETHER for council or Congress, Cebu City’s first lady Margot Osmeña is shunning politics for now and said she has not decided if she will heed Mayor Tomas Osmeña’s wishes for her to run for office.

But Margot admitted that she could change her mind in the coming months and finally decide to run, if the circumstances call for it.

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Mayor Osmeña earlier said that either he, Margot or his sister Minnie would run for the south district’s congressional seat against local opposition leader Jonathan Guardo.

Two weeks ago, he narrowed down the choices for Congress to himself and Minnie, and said that he would like to field Margot to lead Bando Osmeña Pundok Kauswagan’s (BOPK) City Council slate in the south.

In an interview at City Hall yesterday, Margot said she has not discussed the matter seriously with the mayor, who only mentioned the media interview with her casually.

“I think he just said that just to be able to say it. We don’t sit down and discuss these things. It’s not a caucus that we have in the house,” she told reporters in an interview after attending the mass offered for the late former president Corazon Aquino.

Osmeña said he wants his wife to be a councilor so the barangay captains will have an ally in the city council.

Not yet

“Tommy will not force me to do something I don’t want. So should there come a time—like I always say now, No—but should there come a time when things are different, I will not say it’s because Tommy wanted me to do it. I have to want to do it, too. I think that is why Tommy and I respect each other,” Margot said.

Margot, 60, is the co-chairperson of the Cebu City Commission for the Welfare and Protection of Children, and head of the Cebu City Task Force on Street Children.

She said that for now, she will just play the role of a wife and supporter of the mayor, who has just recovered from stage IV urinary bladder cancer.

“He has shown his dedication to Cebu City and that’s something that rubs off on me because I am his wife and in the end, you can’t fight it, you know, so you just share it and hopefully, I’ve been able to help him with that,” she said.

“So as of now, that is my role and if the time comes that it changes, then it will come. But for now it hasn’t yet,” Margot added. (LCR)