The police report against PKR secretary-general Rafizi Ramli over his "atomic bomb" joke reflects the failure of the country's education system, said DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang.

"It shows the utter failure of our educational system whose products do not understand what is a simile, metaphor or a simple figure of speech," Lim said in a statement today.

The Gelang Patah MP said this also showed how education ministers had been national failures.

Meanwhile, DAP's Segambut MP Lim Lip Eng said the probe was a sign of the government's "stupidity".

"Why is political satire unacceptable while certain quarters that threatened bloodshed and display the keris in mass gathering are not acted against?" he said.

He also criticised the police for entertaining such trivial matters.

He said the 1MDB scandal "time bomb" with its huge debt was a more serious issue.

Once the "1MDB bomb" goes off, he said, it was the people who would suffer while the prime minister's family remained oblivious to these concerns.

"A right-thinking prime minister would have resigned over this 'bomb'.

"A responsible government will tell the rakyat how it plans to defuse this time bomb," he said.

Perak police chief Ab Rahim Hanafi said police would probe Rafizi for criminal intimidation under Section 506 of the Penal Code.

This is over Rafizi’s speech at a ceramah in Kuala Kangsar on June 9, where he urged the people to vote Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah) candidate Ahmad Termizi Ramli.

Rafizi had said that if elected, Termizi, who is a nuclear physicist, would be asked to hurl an “atomic bomb” at Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak in Parliament.

Section 506 of the Penal Code carries a jail term of up to two years, a fine, or both.