KUALA LUMPUR, July 20 — Lim Kit Siang urged for "common sense" from Datuk Seri Najib Razak today, saying the prime minister should order local regulators to stop blocking access to Sarawak Report (SR) as censoring the Internet only puts his credibility under the spotlight.

The DAP veteran said Najib should focus on debunking the allegations made in SR's exposes on 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) instead of attempting to muzzle the whistleblower site.

"In blocking access to Sarawak Report, Najib and MCMC are virtually announcing to Malaysians and the world that the prime minister is not as guiltless as he wants the people to believe," Lim said in a statement, referring to local Internet regulator Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).

"My advice to Najib is to allow common sense to prevail, that blocking access to Sarawak Report is not going to end his 1MDB woes but the opposite, plunging his credibility and legitimacy to even unimagined depths, which is not good for him as prime minister and for the nation as well.

"For his best self-interest, Najib should immediately direct MCMC to end the blocking of access of Sarawak Report, as his remedy to debunk the myriad of allegations whether about 1MDB or other scandals, whether by Sarawak Report, Wall Street Journal (WSJ) or other sources, is to tell the truth," he added.

MCMC yesterday confirmed that it has sent out instructions to all service providers in Malaysia to block access to SR’s website, pending investigations into verifying the site’s content.

"The contents could be fake. Such contents could affect the peace and cause national instability, disrupt public order and affect economic stability," the regulator said in a statement.

Lim, however, said that if MCMC was serious about blocking sites that publish unverified information, it would have to apply the same treatment to many other sites including even Umno-owned Utusan Malaysia.

SR editor and founder Clare Rewcastle Brown when responding to MCMC's block yesterday, said the move would not stop her from publishing more exposes on 1MDB.

She said she would stand by SR's previous reports on the scandal and pointed out that Putrajaya has yet to take legal action against the whistleblower website.