MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Ex US president Carter ends Guyana election monitoring trip after falling ill

Jimmy Carter arrived in Guyana on Saturday to participate in a delegation monitoring the country’s general election on Monday

Former United States President Jimmy Carter ended an election-monitoring trip to Guyana early and flew home on Sunday after falling ill, the Carter Center, his nonprofit organization, said in a statement. The Carter Center provided only sketchy information on Sunday about the condition of the 90-year-old former president.

 In its statement, the center said Mr. Carter “was not feeling well”,” and on Twitter it described him as “under the weather.” The former president arrived in Guyana on Saturday to participate in a delegation monitoring the country’s general election on Monday. Although he will no longer be part of that mission, his foundation said he remained “hopeful” about the vote.

The Carter Center also said it hoped that Guyana would engage in “a peaceful process before, during and after the election.”

Donald Ramotar, the president of Guyana, announced the election in January, two months after he suspended Parliament to avoid a no-confidence vote. His People’s Progressive Party has been in power for more than two decades but was unable to win a majority in Parliament in 2011 because of the rise of a multiethnic third party.

Guyanese politics has historically been dominated by two parties that draw support from the country’s two largest racial groups, the descendants of Africans and the descendants of South Asians.

Mr. Carter founded the Carter Center with his wife, Rosalynn Carter, in 1982. It works on human rights and humanitarian issues in more than 80 countries. It has monitored 99 elections in 38 countries, according to the center’s website.

The election on Monday would have been the 39th foreign election in which Mr. Carter had acted as an observer.