Former president John Agyekum Kufuor has withdrawn from voting in Sunday’s Super Delegates’ Conference of the opposition New Patriotic Party.

This is because the former president considers the event as an internal contest and he would not want to be seen to be taking sides.

It is unclear if Mr. Kufuor would take a similar decision on the October 18 National Delegates’ Conference, when delegates of the party vote to elect a flagbearer to lead the NPP to the 2016 presidential elections.

Seven hundred and eighty-seven Special delegates of the NPP are today Sunday, August 31, 2014 voting to prune the seven aspiring presidential candidates to five, ahead of the national conference where about 130,000 party delegates nationwide will elect a flagbearer.

But speaking on Joy FM, Mr. Frank Agyekum, Spokesperson for the former president said Mr. Kufuor wants to remain neutral as a statesman and would therefore not be seen as being biased towards any of the candidates.

“The former president is now being seen more as an elder in the party and he is now playing more of a statesman role in both party and national affairs and he sees these internal contests in the party…and he believes that at this state when the party is in the process of selecting the winner he should stay neutral,” Mr. Agyekum told Joy News’ Elton Brobbey.

Asked whether the former president will also abstain from the October 18 conference, Mr. Agyekum said: “If he sees the way things are going when the time comes he will take that decision”.

Meanwhile, Mr Kufuor has left the country for Ethiopia, to participate in an African Union summit on improving agriculture on the continent.