The government must have thought they possessed a lethal weapon in firebrand MP Pareena Kraikupt. After all, she is fierce, fearless and also appeared morally as well as intellectually flexible enough to mount attacks with logic, or a total lack thereof, as long as it served her purpose of riling her opponents.
With the attacker now having been forced to go on the defensive, her overzealous style is backfiring. And it's the government, presumed by many people to be encouraging her relentless attack campaigns, that is suffering the most damage.
A rookie politician, mostly known for being the daughter of former minister Tawee Kraikupt, Ms Pareena has risen quickly within the government's ranks.
Her hard-hitting, rough-and-ready style suits the mass media and her showmanship must have hit home among her support base. She is also social-media savvy and her opinions have become regular fixtures for some media outlets.
The MP seemed to have secured a position as the government's main combatant, always ready to fight fire with fire or deflect for her side.
Ms Pareena's star was rising until she questioned whether 500 rai of land owned by Somporn Juangroongruangkit, mother of Future Forward Party leader Thanathorn, was part of a community forest.
The land in question was in Ratchaburi, Ms Pareena's constituency. She said she acted on complaints by local people.
As luck would have it, while authorities were checking the legality of Ms Somporn's land ownership, Pheu Thai member Ruangkrai Leekitwattana happened to remember that Ms Pareena had declared ownership of land in the same province to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC).
Mr Ruangkrai reportedly looked into Ms Pareena's assets declaration and questioned whether 1,700 rai of land on which her poultry farms sits is located in a special zone allocated to poor farmers to make a living.
Officials from the Royal Forest Department, Agricultural Land Reform Office and Interior Ministry on Sunday determined that about 40 rai of Ms Pareena's land encroached on a national forest reserve while an investigation is pending whether the rest of her land was legally acquired.
What is most revealing about the Pareena land controversy, however, is how the firebrand MP has defended herself and her ownership.
It's ironic that Ms Pareena could end up having some of her own land confiscated as a result of trying to expose allegedly questionable land belonging to Mr Thanatorn's mother. Double standards seem an understatement in this case.
It's even more embarrassing now that officials have said there are grounds to believe that Ms Pareena makes a living -- more than a hundred million baht a year from the poultry farms according to her assets declaration -- from land that technically can't be "owned''.
Ms Pareena has acted as the "face" of the main government party, which prides itself as being a corruption-busting do-gooder. She is even a member of parliament's anti-corruption committee. But this supposed do-gooder is being accused of acquiring state land illegally.
What "face" can the government show now?
Ms Pareena has fervently defended her land ownership. The impromptu, loose-plot style that she has successfully used to attack her political opponents in the past has not seemed to have worked in her favour this time though.
While Ms Pareena said she acquired the land in question a long time ago, even before the law allocating state land to poor landless farmers came into effect, she has never gone into detail about how she had come to own it.
When pressed by reporters, Ms Pareena dodged the questions by saying she signed an "MoU" with members of the press not to answer any inquiries about the land dispute.
To their credit, the press did not let the usually outspoken MP get off so easily. They asked who within the media had agreed to sign an MoU with her.
When Ms Pareena vaguely said they should know who she was referring to, they told her to name them.
They also told her to apply her no-nonsense style in coming clean about her case.
In the end, Ms Pareena simply had to wai the press, ask for their understanding and flee. One could argue that the firebrand MP was acting gracefully in the face of humiliation. But the truth is she was not.
Ms Pareena represents a breed of politicians who only look good when acting as detractors in political games.
Having been allowed to be the "face" of the government, her apparent inadequacies, hypocrisy and downfall threaten to become the government's own.