MANILA: China on Tuesday rejected a suggestion from a Philippine election official that China might try to sabotage a presidential election in the Philippines next year, saying it was “sheer fabrication”.

The suggestion of Chinese meddling in the May election appeared to stem from a dispute over rival claims to parts of the South China Sea.

Elections Commission official Christian Robert Lim told legislators that his agency had transferred production of vote-counting machines from China after intelligence reports that China planned to sabotage the elections because of the South China Sea dispute.

The spokesman at China’s embassy in the Philippines denied any such plan. “The so-called ‘attempt by China’ to ‘sabotage’ the 2016 elections is totally groundless and a sheer fabrication,” the embassy spokesman, Li Lingxao, said in a statement.

China has always adhered to the principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs.” Philippine voters will in May elect a president, vice president and more than 18,000 legislators and local government executives.