Clutching a loudspeaker, a young man standing atop a pick-up truck repeatedly shouts “Votela! Votela!” as rush-hour pedestrians and shoppers walk past behind him, seemingly uninterested.
He is urging them to cast their vote in favour of his candidate standing for parliament in this week’s poll in the mountainous southern African kingdom of Eswatini.
On September 21, more than 500,000 registered voters in the country formerly known as Swaziland will elect 55 parliamentarians to the House of Assembly.
King Mswati III, Eswatini’s powerful monarch, will appoint the remaining 10 to make up the lower house of 65 representatives.
The elected MPs will then choose 10 senators for the upper house, while the king will select 20 more.
With a wide range of powers allowing the king to summon and dissolve parliament or declare a state of emergency, Eswatini, home to some 1.4 million people, is ranked among the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies.
A sombre battle for the ballot
Unlike many other countries, where the run-up to voting day is typically characterised by vibrant campaign rallies, catchy news headlines and posters of candidates lining the streets, in Eswatini the atmosphere seems much more subdued.
Friday’s vote comes against a backdrop of growing concerns among activists over the fairness of the monarchy’s electoral system, which bans parties and large rallies and forces aspiring MPs to run as independents.
Around the country’s constituencies, there is a scattering of posters of each candidate in their locale. Campaigning is done via loudspeaker patrols and community gatherings held in designated public areas with the approval of the local traditional chief who is appointed by the king.
For some candidates and their campaign teams, the restrictive rules on public gatherings have made it difficult to canvass supporters.
“We are allowed to do our own individual campaign, but we can’t gather people to have rallies where we can say our manifesto,” said Bonisiwe Dlamini, a campaign manager for Sarafina Makha, who is running for the post of headwoman in Soweto, a semi-rural constituency on the edge of Manzini, Eswatini’s second city.
“We can only talk to small groups of people in our constituency so it takes a long time to get the message out,” added Dlamini.
Al Jazeera