Chris Coons

Ag is the biggest business in Delaware.

Poultry is really the sort of beating heart of the Delaware agriculture sector.

Delaware today has the highest percentage of preserved productive agriculture farmland of any state in the country.

I think you could do no better than to take this great Delawarean and give him an opportunity.

It is a rare and good day when I see good people advance here in Washington.

I am grateful for your passion about improving the lives of the people of the Congo.

This is a moment of great risk and that there is a real possibility that it will slip.

I hope that the United States will take an active and engaged role in convening the international community.

We blame everybody else and we give a free ride to the Government of DRC. That is not the kind of policymaking that the Congolese people want.

If we do not fix political legitimacy and we do not, on behalf of the United States, engage in governance questions, then we can do all the work we want to... and we will not have addressed the real driver.

We should use those levers and insist on a delay on the certification of results.

I would defer to the head of the Catholic Church in Congo, Cardinal Monsenguo, who in a superb statement of just a few days ago urged the Congolese Supreme Court to do the right thing.

Does one really think, given that the personnel of this electoral commission that were responsible for this charade in front of us, that we should expect the people of the Congo to rely upon them and have faith in anything they do?

But the fundamental issue is independent international verification and with the purpose, as I said earlier, of enfranchising those who were disenfranchised in order to try and move to a position that you do know who won the election.

Thank you, Mr. Dizolele.

The United States must dramatically ratchet up its efforts to find a way to defuse this crisis and find a way forward that respects and honors the democratic aspirations of the Congolese people.

This is a political issue.

I have heard from a number of constituents real concern about Cameroon and President Biya who modified the Cameroonian Constitution to run for a sixth term.

Help us understand, if you would, how he is going to focus and elevate U.S. policy in the region around LRA, around conflict minerals, around improving governance, and resolving ongoing disputes in the region.

I would like to follow up, if I might, on that same line of questioning.

Please, if you would, describe the technical assistance that the United States is prepared to offer the Congolese authorities to facilitate their conducting a transparent and thorough review of the election process.

Thank you, Assistant Secretary Carson.

The management and technical aspect of these elections to be seriously flawed, the vote tabulation to be lacking in transparency.

The elections were deficient. The CENI did not meet internationally accepted standards in the vote counting process.

This assessment does not propose the final order of candidates necessarily different than announced by the CENI, only that the results process is not credible.