The next presidential election in Afghanistan might take place in 2013. If it happens, it will be months before the schedule predicted in the constitutional law of Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai will not be running again - neither constitution allows him nor does he himself intend to do so. After his term finishes, Hamid Karzai will be doing what he has told to Time Magazine in a recent interview.

Karzai said that he misses walking around Kabul. "That is what I will have to do again," he said. If he had worked to make Kabul look like a real capital, improve its security and lessen its pollution, everyone would miss taking walks in Kabul.

The real question that remains unclear is that who will be Karzai's candidate in the next elections. In the same interview he has talked about the issue. About his successor, Karzai said he was thinking of some people and had met with some people on the question. He said he had to find a person who will be an Afghan, — a patriot, good to the Afghan people and supportive to Afghanistan's allies.

Definitely, the people of Afghanistan would need a sincere, hard working and patriotic president. Additionally, only a government that is significantly different from Hamid Karzai's government would be able to lead Afghanistan in the post-2014 era, when all the international troops will be out of Afghanistan.

A desirable government would be a corruption-free and reform-oriented government that can defend, reconstruct and develop Afghanistan, expand rule of law, provide justice, counter narcotics, protect human rights and do not call Taliban as its brother.

The biggest challenge for the next president will be correcting the mistakes that Karzai's administration will leave behind. Finally, Afghans would need a president who would roam freely within Kabul without any fear, breathing clean air. But all these will only be possible, if the current government does not create hurdles to a free and fair election as it did in the last presidential and parliamentary elections.