Kinshasa — The outgoing President of the Democratic Republic of Congo Félix Tshisekedi, was re-elected, with 73.34% of the vote. This emerges from the official results announced by the Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) on Sunday December 31, 2023.

However, this result has already been challenged by the opposition, which denounced fraud and irregularities. The December 20 elections were extended by at least one day due to a delay in the delivery of voting materials to several polling stations (see Fides, 22/12/2023). On December 28, election observers from the Catholic and Protestant churches in the Democratic Republic of Congo said they had observed "many cases of irregularities."

The observers who carried out a "parallel counting of votes" found that in the presidential elections "one candidate was well ahead of the others with more than half of the votes," Donatien Nshole, secretary general of the Congolese Bishops' Conference told the press, without naming the candidate in question. "However, numerous cases of irregularities have been documented that could jeopardize the integrity of the election results at some polling stations," he added.

According to the election observation mission of the Catholic and Protestant Church, which deployed more than 24,000 election observers, in some areas voting was extended not by one day but by several days, with the election taking place until December 27. In its report, the mission questions the legality of this extension.

Msgr. Nshole also urged the electoral commission to publish the provisional results seat by seat in order to evaluate the correctness of the vote.