We emailed 16 Malaysian MPs to see if they’d reply. Guess which 2 did

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Given that our previous article on emailing local and international government departments was so well-received, we decided we’d ride the wave and try it again; this time with Malaysian MPs.

We still can’t get over the fact that North Korea replied to our email. Image from: KCNA via Reuters

To be honest, we weren’t expecting much; our writer Jake did once get a reply from his own area’s representative Bryan Lai (ADUN of Teratai) regarding an infrastructural problem, so there’s still some hope. Here’s how we went about it.

We tried selecting MPs from a diverse list of parties and backgrounds

While we initially only emailed the most well-known MPs, we realized that we needed more representation from both Peninsular and East Malaysia, just for a little bit of balance. So we dug into a list of MP contact information available on the Malaysian Parliament’s Official Portal (parlimen.gov.my). Here’s who we reached out to:

Peninsular Malaysia

Khairy Jamaluddin (UMNO, Rembau)
Maria Chin Abdullah (PKR, Petaling Jaya)
Ismail Sabri (UMNO, Bera)
Saravanan Murugan (MIC, Tapah)
Faizal Azumu (BERSATU, Tambun)
Azmin Ali (BERSATU, Gombak)
Azalina Othman (UMNO, Pengerang)
Yeo Bee Yin (DAP, Bakri)
Rina Harun (UMNO, Titiwangsa)
Anwar Ibrahim (PKR, Port Dickson)
Hannah Yeoh (DAP, Segambut)
Nga Kor Ming (DAP, Teluk Intan)

East Malaysia

Bung Moktar (UMNO, Kinabatangan)
Michael Teo Yu Keng (PKR, Miri)
Hasan Baharom (AMANAH, Tuaran)
Alice Lau (DAP, Lanang)

Of course, since we’re quite busy with other things as well, we couldn’t conceivably email ALL of them asking for an interview. So, Cilibos allowed us to ask for an interview with only one MP. Naturally, we only had one clear choice for that: none other than Daddy KJ himself.

For the rest, we mostly asked non-threatening questions relating to either their plans for GE15, their constituencies or cabinet posts; for instance, we asked Youth and Sports Minister Faizal Azumu his thoughts on our national team’s chances for next year’s AFC Asian Cup.

We thought of asking him about this picture, but decided against it. Image from: Twitter user @HarakatDailyHD

Well, as we mentioned in the title, yes, only two replied to us. The first one was… *drumroll*

Hannah Yeoh

This wasn’t too big of a surprise tbh, since YB Hannah is actually a Cilisos reader!

Thank *you*, YB. Image screencapped from Hannah Yeoh’s FB page

Our question to her was actually quite generic; like most of the other MPs, we asked her what her GE15 plans were for her constituency of Segambut. But Hannah’s Special Assistant professionally responded to us within 2 days, asking:

So just like that, despite us not really being prepared for it, we got ourselves a potential interview with Hannah Yeoh. Stay tuned for that one!

However, the reply that we (especially Cilibos) were very prepared for, and very much anticipated, was…

Khairy Jamaluddin

The man, the beard, the legend. Image from: The Star

Yeah, we still can’t get over it. The one email we sent requesting for an interview actually got a reply, and it was none other than Daddy KJ himself (or as Cilibos calls him, Khairy JamaluDaddy).

And his press secretary got back to us on Whatsapp within the same day too:

With that, we’re glad to report that we are currently drafting a list of questions for KJ, so stay tuned for that one as well.

But at the end of this whole experiment, one thing we realized, just like in the previous article about emailing international government departments, was that…

There’s no real 100% surefire way to guarantee an email response from your MP

As working professionals ourselves, we understand that MPs have many important things to do, so it’s understandable that they wouldn’t reply to every email; even the ones who did reply, did so via assistants (massive credit to them for taking the effort btw).

We also admit that we weren’t really sure what questions to ask, so we ended up asking mostly generic questions regarding their jobs. Perhaps we might have gotten more replies had we addressed specific issues, such as in the case of our writer Jake and his MP. Or perhaps we might have gotten more replies had we asked for more interviews. But like we said, we just can’t commit to so many at a time.

With that being said, our verdict would still be: yes, you should absolutely email your MPs if you have a legitimate concern, as is your right as a Malaysian citizen. After all, those email addresses do exist for a reason.

On that note, let us know if you have any questions for Hannah Yeoh/KJ!