If the current roadmap holds, Egypt could see its next presidential elections to select its fifth head of state sometime in the second quarter of 2014. A minority has been calling for holding the presidential elections earlier before the parliamentary polls, but all signs indicate the current administration is adamantly opposed to amending its roadmap.

Of course, it is a bit premature to speculate about who the (un)lucky winning candidate is likely to be. But it is not too soon to begin surveying the environment, especially as the national discussion has begun to heat up amid growing public calls for army head Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to run.

A bit over a year since Mohammed Morsi had won the country's first free presidential elections, Egypt has starkly changed. The January 25 Revolution is not the holy defining buzzword that it was with June 30 substantially taking over the mantle, although most Islamists obviously fall on the other side of the June 30 bandwagon. Anti-Mubarakism appears to be less potent an idea than it once was at first, though it still carries substantial influence. The revolutionary camp is now divided beyond what appears to be obviously achievable repair: Morsi's controversial and increasingly autocratic year in power on one hand, and Morsi's ouster, the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and allies and the fall of hundreds of his supporters on the other have made national reconciliation virtually unthinkable at the moment.

A heated wave of nationalism is taking over the country, with the military and Sisi at its heart. The anti-Islamist media has monopolized the airwaves with a quasi-McCarthyist rampage, while no pro-Islamist media is present to counterbalance, with the exception of Al Jazeera, which is facing growing barriers to operate. Most of the Brotherhood's top leadership is now in official custody pending investigations and trials, leaving the country's largest political force effectively decapitated and ostensibly less capable of pushing for any potential candidate in such elections.