Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je continues to gain media attention with verbal gaffes, including his March 8 reference to foreign brides as having been “imported.”

His remarks raised the ire of various organizations, including the Taipei branch of the Female Immigrant Care Association and the TransAsia Sisterhood Alliance, who demonstrated in front of the mayor’s residence to protest his alleged denigration of foreign spouses.

The episode was only the latest in a series of gaffes that have put the mayor under the spotlight, including dismissing a gift watch given by a British official by saying he would throw it onto the scrap heap. The mayor was also embroiled in a dispute with a U.S.-based publication, the bi-monthly Foreign Policy, in which he claimed that the journal had mistranslated a portion of an interview in which he seemed to support colonization. Ko backed off that claim when the publication produced the transcript of a tape substantiating its version.