MANILA, Philippines - "You don't throw away P1 billion and we cannot afford it really."

This was Las Piñas City Rep. Cynthia Villar's reaction to the claim of independent presidential candidate Jamby Madrigal that she received a P1 billion bribe offer from Villar's husband, Nacionalista Party standard-bearer Manny Villar.

Madrigal said an emissary of Villar approached her last year and asked her to withdraw her ethics complaint on the C-5 "double insertion" controversy against Villar in exchange for P1 billion.

In response, Villar's wife said that as a businessman, it was against her husband's nature to just throw away money.

"Why would he do that? You know it's hard to earn money. It's so hard to earn P1 million, how much more P1 billion," Mrs. Villar said in an interview on ANC's Headstart hosted by Karen Davila.

The Las Piñas congresswoman said that before spending on anything, their family always assesses if they would get their money's worth.

She added that her husband's opponents in the presidential race are trying to picture Villar as a person who uses money to get what he wants.

"They are the ones creating that image. They want to destroy Manny," she said, adding that she was surprised newspapers would print such an "out of this world" claim.

It was not the first that a bribery allegation has been leveled against Villar. Another presidential candidate, Sen. Richard Gordon, earlier said a Villar emissary offered money and a Cabinet position if Gordon would pull out of the presidential race and withdraw support for a Senate report ordering Villar's censure on the C-5 road project controversy.

Mrs. Villar denied that her husband would even attempt to talk to Gordon, who is also running for the presidency.

"Manny did not talk to him... We will be afraid to talk to them because they might think that we are insulting them," she said.

Villar has been gaining on Liberal Party standard-bearer Sen. Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III in presidential surveys. Madrigal and Gordon, meanwhile, have been consistently lagging behind the surveys.

It’s politics, not ethics

Before Gordon and Madrigal, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile made the first revelation about Villar's supposed move to buy his way out of the road project controversy.

Enrile said the offer was made personally by Villar during a dinner meeting in a hotel in Manila.

For her part, Mrs. Villar said her husband's conversation was a normal gesture among senators to "to be friendly with one another." She said Enrile could have misunderstood Villar's intent as a form of bribery since Enrile was handling the Senate investigation on the C-5 road controversy.

Mrs. Villar repeated her husband's claim that the C-5 controversy was blown out of proportion because of politics. "I think it's not ethics, it's politics," she said.

She insisted that Villar was just trying to do his job and help the government ease the traffic problem in Metro Manila.

She added that aside from her husband, the whole Congress and even President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo are responsible for the approval of the C-5 road project's budget.

"It was not his decision alone to have that C-5. It's the Senate's decision, it's part of the budget. The Senate passed the budget, the House passed the budget. The bicameral committee approved it and the President signed that budget. So what's the question?" Mrs. Villar said.