Working 18-hour days for the last 34 years. Advocate of livelihood programs as the answer to poverty. Indefatigable legislator and proponent of community service. Member of a political family whose history goes back 42 years.

If the foregoing reads like a presidential candidate’s biodata, it is not. The owner of the capsule c.v. is not even a candidate – unless one considers the (unofficial) position of first lady as one of those up for grabs in 2010.

Cynthia Villar, on her last term as representative of Las Piñas, is a viable, more-than-qualified “candidate” for first lady. But as she told lifestyle editors at the Manila Hotel’s Mabuhay Palace, “I’ve not thought about going into Malacañang or what I’d be doing in case Manny wins.”

As far as the first lady of Las Piñas is concerned, it’s just another job, this campaign that she is working on to fulfill her husband’s dream of an “opportunity to serve.”

Describing her Manny as someone “so dependable that he’s the one to grow old with,” Rep. Cynthia put it this way: “The regret would be that when we grow old, we’d be telling ourselves we should have done it but we did not, we could have done something and we didn’t.”

Describing herself as the granddaughter of a market vendor who sold betel leaves and the daughter of Mayor Filemon Aguilar and his schoolteacher-wife, Cynthia said, “Manny and I are used to adversities. This is nothing compared to the 1997 Asian crisis where he could have lost everything, everything.

This campaign is only a race.”

A loser she is not. Acknowledging that Noynoy Aquino is the toughest nut to crack, she added, “They’ve made the C-5 road extension an issue against Manny, but they’re quiet about the SCTex road that cuts into Hacienda Luisita’s 6,500 hectares.”

The salt beds in her hometown have given way to subdivisions, but Cynthia, who prefers to work alone (“so I don’t have to look out for others”), has acquired a small salt bed of her own to remind her of her town’s origins.

She has also acquired 12 new shirts, all in orange, to keep pace with her husband’s campaign color.