KARACHI — Now that the great excitement generated by the presidential referendum, with all the features that could safely have been predicted, has subsided, Pakistan is entering a new phase in its political history.

And the focus will remain on how President Gen. Pervez Musharraf will contend with all the opposition forces that the referendum has energized, with the formalization of his grip on power for five more years, and with the rosy promises that he had dispensed during an excessively organized, noisy campaign. His task, certainly, has become more arduous because of the cult of personality that is now built around him. In such situations, popular expectations tend to rise unrealistically.

In the immediate context, though, the debate on the turnout and electoral irregularities in Tuesday’s referendum will continue. On the one hand, the government has declared President Musharraf’s victory with an almost embarrassing show of self-righteousness and bravado. On the other, independent observers have reported blatant irregularities at polling stations across the country. There were charges of multiple voting and ballot stuffing. The entire official machinery was mobilized to project a show of enthusiastic support for the only contender.

There is no way, thus, to assess the ratio of voluntary voters. Voter turnout in Pakistan’s keenly contested general elections has steadily been falling and it was around 35 percent when Nawaz Sharif won his landslide victory in February 1997. A referendum, particularly when boycotted by the political opposition, is not meant to enthuse the populace. There is also a paradox in a military government wanting to inject political passion in a society it had initially sought to depoliticize. Many critics of President Musharraf’s decision to go for a referendum argue that this exercise has been counter-productive and has in fact undermined the credibility of the present arrangement.

In any case, Gen. Pervez Musharraf has now ‘won’ a five-year term he said he needed to ensure the continuation of the reforms he has introduced. But while the direction that he has set for his government as an ally of the US campaign against terrorism is understandable and widely accepted, there is considerable suspicion about the constitutional amendments that are to be enforced before October’s elections. If he follows the path charted by the previous military ruler Gen. Zia ul-Haq, who had also held a similar referendum in 1984, the forthcoming elections could be held on a non-party basis, to weaken the support of the parties of the former prime ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

Now that the image of President Musharraf is systematically being projected as that of a savior, the other major figure on the political horizon, that of Benazir Bhutto, is bound to emerge as a counterpoint. The scope for a confrontation between the two is steadily building up. While President Musharraf has vowed not to allow the two former prime ministers to contest elections — and is likely to introduce the necessary laws — Benazir Bhutto seems determined to return to Pakistan before the elections from her self-exile, if only to be arrested to face corruption charges now pending in the courts. Her presence alone could cause some political commotion.

One measure of how the political equilibrium in the country has been disrupted by alliances and equations forced by the referendum is the disaffection of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) that has a dominant presence in Karachi. In the run up to the referendum, MQM appeared to have reached an understanding with the government and it was allowed to stage a large rally in Karachi prior to President Musharraf’s last public meeting in the city on Sunday. In this meeting also, MQM’s presence was very visible.

But MQM was unhappy with what it saw as official indifference to the killing of two of its former legislators a few days before the referendum and there was some confusion about its activists’ participation in the voting. On Tuesday evening, after the voting was over, it called for a day of strike in Karachi yesterday and a number of bomb blasts in the city on Wednesday almost ensured the success of that strike. The message here is that the law and order situation, mainly in Karachi, has deteriorated at a critical time and the government is likely to get under pressure on this account.

On the national level, the end of a period of very hectic activity and intense involvement of the state’s machinery could induce an anti-climactic sense of emptiness and sober reflection. Observers anticipate a realization on the part of the administration that the referendum hullabaloo had really been overdone and that the highhandedness involved in the exercise was not very desirable. After all, the fact that President Musharraf has won the vote overwhelmingly seems no longer a revolutionary achievement, especially when he retains his uniform as the chief of the army staff.