Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of concerns raised by bishops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in response to the publication of provisional results for the recent presidential election.

A statement by the Committee of the National Episcopal Conference of the Congo (CENCO) on 10 January confirmed that CENCO deployed 40,000 observers for the 30 December elections, in all voting centres across the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). They reported that the provisional results announced by the electoral commission (CENI) were not in line with the data collected by their observation mission.

As the Foreign Secretary said on 10 January, we are very concerned about disparities in the presidential and parliamentary election results. At the UN Security Council on 11 January, we called on CENCO and CENI to give further detail of their results data and analysis. It is crucial that the democratic will of the Congolese people is respected. Peaceful, fair and credible democratic processes are vital to creating a prosperous DRC.