A legal rights NGO has warned against the practice of lodging police reports whenever offensive comments are made against new Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad saying such a practice was "frivolous".

Lawyers for Liberty (LFL) said this was reminiscent of the former BN government and their supporters and only trivialised the act of lodging police reports while disregarding the rights of others to criticise.

The watchdog body was referring to recent police reports lodged by a several NGOs and a Bersatu member against those whom they perceived to have posted “offensive” statements against Mahathir.

"Such police reports are clearly frivolous and are a throwback to similar practices employed by the previous BN government and their supporters to supposedly protect the image of their leaders and silence criticisms," LFL executive director Eric Paulsen (above) said in a statement today.

He said that in line with the ushering in of a new government and new reforms, people from all sides of the political divide should accept differing views even if critical or insulting of the government or political leaders.

Paulsen said exceptions could be made in cases where the social media comments threatened violence or incited public disorder.

"As the new government is in the midst of recalibrating a new democratic Malaysia, state institutions including the police and the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) must be allowed to focus on their day-to-day work instead of wasting resources investigating such reports.

"We certainly expect the new government to be more open and amenable to public criticism including perceived insults as this is the norm in genuine democracies and is to be expected by the office that they hold," he added.

LFL hoped that the police and MCMC would "summarily dismiss" such reports.