(Kinshasa) The electoral observation mission of the Catholic and Protestant Churches of the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose opinions are eagerly awaited, said Thursday that it had noted “numerous cases of irregularities” during last week’s elections in the great Central African countries.
The mission, which carried out a “parallel counting of votes”, noted that for the presidential election “one candidate stood out greatly from the others, with more than half of the votes alone”, declared to the press Mgr Donatien Nshole , secretary general of the national episcopal conference of Congo (Cenco), without naming the candidate in question.
“However, it documented numerous cases of irregularities likely to affect the integrity of the results of different elections, in certain places,” he continued, reading the conclusions of a preliminary report of the mission.
Nearly 44 million voters were called to elect their president, their national and provincial deputies and their municipal councilors on December 20.
But due to numerous logistical problems, the quadruple vote was officially extended on the 21st and continued for several days in certain remote areas, until the 27th according to the mission of the Churches. In its report, the mission questions the legality of this extension.
Bishop Nshole also urged the electoral commission (Céni) to publish the provisional results polling station by polling station, which it has not yet done.
Since the end of last week, the Ceni has published partial results of the presidential election, which place the outgoing head of state, Félix Tshisekedi, in power since January 2019 and candidate for a second five-year term, very clearly in the lead.
On Wednesday evening, he was credited with 77% of the votes, out of some 9.3 million votes counted, followed by opponents Moïse Katumbi (15.7%) and Martin Fayulu (3.9%).
The Ceni continued to publish partial results of the presidential election on Thursday evening.