Andrea Morales Diaz, a former Costa Rica legislator whose short political career was filled with controversy, will be the host of a new tabloid-style television show.

According to a news report filed by Laura Morales of online news daily La Prensa Libre (the oldest news publication still running in Costa Rica), Ms. Morales will abandon her current occupation as an attorney to lead “Contámelo Todo” (Tell Me Everything), an upcoming program on the Repretel national television network.

Ms. Morales was elected legislator for the Citizen Action Party (Spanish initials: PAC) in 2006 at the age of 25. Though she only lasted a couple of years in office, her political career was closely followed and deeply criticized for various reasons.

Strong criticism of Ms. Morales started on election day with her detractors, who did not believe she would be elected, claimed that she got votes based on her looks rather than on her political acumen. Once she took office, photojournalists flocked to the Legislative Assembly to get pictures of the attractive junior legislator, whose outfits became tighter after a few weeks.

Eventually, the former legislator would grace the cover of the defunct SOHO magazine, a glossy Latin American publication similar to [the old] Playboy but with a little less nudity. On that photo shoot, Ms. Morales showed a bit of skin but mostly kept her clothes on. By this time, criticism against Ms. Morales escalated as she seemed to spend a lot of time on morning television talk shows and social activities than at the Assembly.

The beginning of the end for Ms. Morales arrived in late 2007, when fellow PAC legislators were upset at her independent streak and accused her of not following the party’s goal to oppose the then-ruling National Liberation Party (Spanish initials: PLN).

The tipping point would be the publication of candid photographs of Ms. Morales wearing a designer bikini in Puerto Viejo, a picturesque resort town in the Caribbean region of Costa Rica. Male fans of the young legislator were delighted because these photos were more revealing than the SOHO photo shoot, but the PAC leadership was more interested in the man who appeared next to her.

It so happened that Ms. Morales was dating Legislator Oscar Nuñez, a married man several years older than her. The man’s legal status and age were not the problem; his political affiliation was. Legislator Nuñez is a PLN man, which means that Ms. Morales was literally sleeping with the enemy. By 2008, she had “resigned” from her legislative post.

If anything, Ms. Morales left a peculiar political legacy in Costa Rica: in the municipal elections a couple of years ago, two young lingerie models were strong candidates for cantonal government posts.