The police have received several reports against former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad for his blog postings, inspector-general of police Khalid Abu Bakar said today.

These reports were lodged a few days ago and police would begin investigating the reports, Khalid said.

“The standard operating procedure is that we will start investigations based on the reports,” he said in Penang.

Khalid is not certain how many reports have been lodged but said “I am only certain that reports have been lodged”.

Asked when action would be taken against Mahathir, Khalid said: “We have to investigate first, according to procedures. Don’t be so emotional.

“You are too emotional, you just want us to arrest,” he said, referring to the media, drawing laughter from the crowd.

“Since we follow procedures, if there is indeed any offence, we will arrest,” Khalid added.

When told that Mahathir was merely expressing his views, Khalid shot back, “You can form your own opinion, but we will carry out our responsibility.”

Khalid last week called on those not happy with Mahathir's blog posts to lodge a report for the police to investigate to see if the law has been broken.

He said in such cases, the police need to base their investigations on the reports lodged.

Khalid said this in response to Umno information chief Annuar Musa who said that Mahathir's posting in his blog on Feb 3 was seditious.

'We are never emotional'

He also told reporters that police cannot act based on emotions in all the cases being investigated.

“As law enforcers, we are never emotional; if there are reports, we will investigate. We will obey all legal process and we will discuss with the attorney-general’s chambers. When there is enough basis for action, we will take it,” he said.

Khalid was speaking at a press conference after witnessing the ceremony to hand over duties to the new Penang police chief Abdul Ghabar Rejab.

Also present was former Penang CPO Abdul Rahim Hanafi, who has been transferred to Perak.

Mahathir in a blog posting on Feb 5 repeated his calls for Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to quit, saying that Najib’s 1MDB-linked financial scandals had shamed the country.

Mahathir also slammed attorney-general Mohamed Apandi Ali for allegedly protecting Najib.

He has also expressed doubts about Apandi’s willingness to cooperate with his Swiss counterpart on the European country's investigation into 1MDB.