The wait is finally (almost) over.
After months of sometimes frenetic campaigning, Fijians will go to the polls tomorrow and decide whether they want to award Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama another term in office.
But if you wander through the streets of Suva, it does not feel like the city is gripped with election fever.
In fact, there is a surreal feeling of utter normalcy. There's no sign of campaigning. No placards, no signs. No corflutes or advertisements.
The only hints that Fijians are on the cusp of a significant political decision are the Fiji election office posters up around town, which offer carefully factual and neutral information about how to legally vote.
This is no coincidence. In fact, it's entirely by design.
The Pacific Island country is currently enforcing a strict two-and-a-half-day campaigning blackout, which will be in place right until the moment polls close at 6pm on Wednesday.
The rules are uncompromising. No campaigning is allowed by any of the candidates, from the prime minister down.
Fijians not shy about reporting breaches
Campaign rallies and forums are banned. Political parties and candidates have had to pull down their campaign social media accounts and websites.
They are not permitted to call Fijians by phone to make their case, or to approach them in the street to plead for votes.
The rules apply to everyday voters as well as candidates. Not even campaign stickers are exempt; they need to be peeled off whatever they have been stuck to.
Just ahead of the blackout, the elections supervisor, Mohammed Saneem, warned political parties that they would be held to account if their paraphernalia happened to be spotted on a car windshield.
"If there have been stickers not taken out from cars because the owner didn't take it out, then the party and the candidate is also responsible, and we will not hesitate to refer these breaches to FICAC (Fiji's anti-corruption agency)," he said.
"Because it's a critical time just before the election, and we cannot afford to let breaches continue unnoticed."
"If you have distributed your materials out, like posters and banners and stickers on cars and stickers on shop windows and stickers wherever you go, if you have stickers hanging from polls, you need to start looking who has control of that, because they will need to come down."
The Fiji blackout stands in stark contrast to electioneering in Australia, where campaigning typically reaches a fever pitch in the closing days of a campaign and reaches a final crescendo on polling day, when voters have to walk past phalanxes of pamphlet-wielding volunteers to cast their vote.
But its supporters in Fiji argue that it's an invaluable tool for giving voters some breathing space in the immediate lead-up to an election.
And perhaps unsurprisingly, Fijians are — apparently — not typically shy about reporting breaches.
In fact, the election authorities have made it clear they hope citizens will let them know immediately if they see anything against the rules.
"The best thing about this is that the enforcement of this will be done by the Fiji Elections Office but the monitoring will be done by the general public of Fiji," Mr Saneem said.
"People very quickly are able to send us pictures of breaches on Facebook and social media. Some have even gone to the extent of employing fake accounts to send us some breaches."
Implications for Fijian media
The blackout also has implications for the media. For its duration, media are not allowed to publish, print or broadcast any electioneering, or any opinions and debates about election topics.
Some Fijian media organisations have responded with an almost complete halt on all election coverage.
Others are simply providing broad information to help people work out where and how they can vote on Wednesday.
Either way, the election will be a substantial logistical challenge, and one that Fiji's government has poured significant resources into pulling off.
About 600,000 voters will head to almost 1,500 polling stations dotted around the islands of Fiji.
And, as is usual for an election, it will be closely watched.
The Multinational Observer Group (MOG) – which includes 95 members from 16 different countries from around the globe – is on hand to make sure it's conducted in a free and fair manner.
One of the MOG's co-chairs, Australian government MP Josh Wilson, stressed that while the group would issue a report after the election, it had no enforcement powers in Fiji.
"We are entirely neutral. We are here simply to watch what happens in the conduct of the election … so people can have confidence that it has been operated properly" he told the ABC.
Some members of the group – such as the Fijian officials actually running the election — have already spent weeks traversing the country while pre-polling has been underway.
"In a place like Fiji, [an election] presents specific challenges. People have to go to remote islands, [Fijian election] staff have to conduct ballots by going out on small boats, crossing rivers, going down jungle cliffs, dealing with incredible weather," Mr Wilson said.
"So hats off to everyone who has been involved."
