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Press TV has conducted an interview with Sherif Rizk, a political activist from Cairo, about Egypt where the interim government has called for reconciliation with the Muslim Brotherhood amid a military crackdown on civilian demonstrators demanding the reinstatement of ousted President Mohamed Morsi who is currently awaiting trial.

- The deputy PM, as we saw in that report, has been saying the government and the Muslim Brotherhood should seek reconciliation because, in his words, only an inclusive political process, not security crackdowns, can bring stability.

But how is reconciliation possible?

- I don’t think reconciliation is quite possible because when we talk about reconciliation, we talk about two parties equal in power, equal in status, equal in position.

But now, what you’re talking about is the interim government and the Muslim Brotherhood - most of their leaders are in prison and most of the young members are protesting all the time. So, you cannot really find exact common ground that they should reconciliate on.

I mean, what kind of common ground are they going to talk? The Muslim Brotherhood are always talking about getting Morsi back. So, this kind of win-lose situation will never lead to reconciliation. Reconciliation will only happen when we have a common ground. I don’t think it exists.

- Our guest (Mustafa Reda, political commentator, Cairo) was saying that the Muslim Brotherhood is destabilizing the universities and has been causing violence; therefore, it has to stop these kinds of policies for any reconciliation to work. What do you think about that?

- You know what they say about a masterpiece, a work of art. A masterpiece is a work of art that stands the test of time. Here we are working on the test of time. So, if the Muslim Brotherhood are trying to work hard on destabilizing the situation, they are not that powerful.

So, I mean, the government and the political regime right now is working on the time factor. So, the more time goes on, the more they stay in their position.

Just today, they announced that the minimum salary would be 1,200 in January. That’s a great political step. They are getting the masses on side with them. So, they are playing politically very well.

Unfortunately - though I don’t know if it’s unfortunate or not - the Muslim Brotherhood are not politically smart. They’re not realistic, they just work on ground that will really not lead them anywhere. They are politically weak; they are not able to negotiate; they do not know the terms of negotiations in terms of the power factor.

If we just go back a little bit, we find that Morsi was opposing the judiciary system, the courts, the cultural people - the Ministry of Culture, the artists, lots of groups in society actually were completely against him.

So, in terms of playing the game very well, Morsi was quite an amateur. And the Muslim Brotherhood are in the same team. So, I don’t think they will be able to find a solution.

- Our guest earlier on was saying that the Muslim Brotherhood should change strategy and should enter into political process. We are, of course, hearing of an inclusive political plan, but do you think the Muslim Brotherhood is going to agree to enter into that process even if the entire interim government and the military agrees to it?

- No. I can’t see any kind of mindset in the Muslim Brotherhood that is going to change anything. The mindset of the Muslim Brotherhood is quite stubborn and they see that they are much more superior to other groups.

However, in reality they haven’t achieved any targets. They stayed in office for one year, they did very little for the people. They were not very convincing to anyone around the world.

Look at a similar example of Morsi. Morsi at the very beginning of his rule travelled to Iran and the Committee for Muslim Nations and then he said I am completely with the Syrian revolution. And then after two months he said I am with a political solution. And then after a visit to Russia he said I am exactly in agreement with the Russian stand; and then he boycotted the relationship with Syria.

If you look at him strategically, this is not a president.

And this was one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, so if you back the Muslim Brotherhood as a group they don’t even know what strategic means. They don’t know the terms of power.

- Our guest was saying that the majority of the people now in Egypt, if you ask them, they are not supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and that Mohammad Morsi therefore does not have supporters. Do you see it in that way or would you say that it is a polarized nation now with Morsi’s supporters and Morsi’s opponents?

- Yes it is polarized of course, but the Muslim Brotherhood are not that popular in Egypt anyway and their demonstrations if I may correct what has been said, have not been peaceful at all. They are using violence and we have seen lots of incidences about that.

But what I’m talking about is strategic planning for a political party. I’m talking about the political party, which is actually acting quite strange. It’s not a political party - they don’t have strategic planning; they don’t compromise; they don’t negotiate. They just say either we take this or not.

So, in the future I would never figure out how they could stay in their political agenda.

- One question here would be looking at the situation now, how can the military’s actions be justified? I mean, if we take into account that the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t have a lot of supporters in the country; that Mohammad Morsi wasn’t a good enough president - how can the actions by the military be justified?

We are seeing this emergency rule for instance being applied; we’re seeing a ban on parts of the media; we are seeing suppression on the right to free assembly. How can this be justified?

- If we talk about the media that was banned ... the media that was banned was agitating people against other. So, there were good reasons to ban them. In terms of ethical ideas about media you cannot call it media. They were only supporting Morsi and they were agitating people against each other.

They accused people by names; they agitated people against the Christians and other minority groups, so you cannot call them media and at the same time you cannot call the Muslim Brotherhood a political group. It’s a group that tries to brainwash people’s minds that they are working in the name of religion.

But when they ruled, they were kind of getting all their friends to rule the country.

- If it’s not a political party, then how come the government wants it to join a political process if it’s not considered even a political party, how is it expected to join into a political process?

- They can only join a political process if they act politically. If they don’t talk about religion all the time; if they don’t assume they’ve got absolute tooth.

Only then can they be partners as political members in the country, but otherwise you are talking about believers and non-believers.

- Let’s talk about the trial, the upcoming trial of Mohammad Morsi himself. Looking at a lot of questions that have been raised now about this trial. I refer to some of them.

We are seeing the lawyer for Mohammad Morsi saying that we haven’t been given access to the prosecution’s case; we weren’t able to talk to Morsi himself; and they’re saying they don’t think there is any - in their words - legal evidence to put Morsi behind bars or to hold him.

He is being kept in an unknown location, he can’t communicate with anyone. The situation of Morsi himself is being seen as completely illegal. How can this trial be justified. How can people expect this trial to be a fair one?

- I wouldn’t speculate on that. It is only if there is legal evidence that he committed crimes, only concrete evidence then he would be charged. Otherwise we wouldn’t accept a trial for somebody that you don’t have anything against him. There are three judges and he’s got his lawyers to defend him.

- His lawyers have been saying that we are not going to defend him, they’re just going to be present in court. They are saying that when we don’t have access to Morsi himself, that we don’t have access to the documents that are going to be used against him, we are not going to defend him.

They are saying that this is a show trial. The way that this court is being held is under question.

- In anywhere in the world if you don’t have access to documents ... If you go to the United State and somebody is accused of something, you cannot access the documents or anything, but he can have a public trial ... which is happening now.

- But they still didn’t have access to Mohammad Morsi, did they?

- I don’t know, maybe because it is dangerous, a security thing, but who should have access, only his family should visit him I think and his lawyers.

- Well that is the thing. His lawyers have been saying they weren’t allowed to speak with him, they weren’t allowed to see him. This is of course according to the lawyers and that is raising questions.

One more issue I’d like to bring up with you and that is a lot of concern about a return to the Mubarak era.

People are saying that those who are in the judiciary; those who are in the security forces, these are the same people who were in these institutions under Hosni Mubarak. How can we be expecting the demands of the revolutionaries to be met for democracy to be achieved.

Do you share that concern?

- I’m quite surprised that people are thinking about getting back to Mubarak again. I mean, Morsi was worse than Mubarak ... getting back to Mubarak, which is not realistic.

What happened was in January 2011. People were dreamers; they were talking about things that would not happen. They were telling people that he would be in Switzerland tomorrow, which is not realistic.

Let’s be realistic and start from there. We are a third world country and we have to work hard to develop our country and Morsi is not actually any kind of somebody who could lead us anywhere. He would actually have gotten us into somewhere that we would never be able to get out of.

Unfortunately, the government we’ve got right now is much better, but it is not as good as it should be.