The Catholic Church rejected the official result of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s presidential election on Thursday. And the losing candidate called the result a “robbery.” Election officials announced that opposition candidate Felix Tshisekedi won the election. He is set to replace President Joseph Kabila, who has ruled the Democratic Republic of the Congo for 18 years. But pre-election studies had predicted an easy win for Martin Fayulu, another opposition candidate. The influential Catholic Church had 40,000 observers at voting stations across the country. It said its own findings did not support the official results. Three diplomats briefed on the Church’s mission said their findings clearly showed Fayulu had won. The Church said in a statement, “The results from the presidential election as published by CENI do not correspond to the data collected by our observation mission from polling stations and vote counts.”
