Power and impunity are rarely parted.

It is futile to try to identify the first case of a circular cause and consequence. Whether ODS is the cause and TOP 09 the consequence of our political troubles, or vice versa, may count in the theatre of Czech party politics, but it is a matter of complete indifference in a court of law.

Like power and impunity, Petr Nečas and Miroslav Kalousek had become hard to distinguish. Who knows and who any longer cares which of them is the cause and which the consequence?

In the last days, both men have sought to present an assault on their feelings of impunity as an attack on our freedoms and the good name of the Czech Republic.

For them to criticise prosecutors of abusing power demonstrates how high office deludes those who hold it into thinking of themselves as above the law.

Nečas is undoubtedly a reluctant abuser of power, whereas to Kalousek the abuse comes naturally. Always quick to display his contempt for law, Kalousek dared to ask the rhetorical question of whether we wished to be ruled by elected politicians or by prosecutors, as if this was the choice before us.

We wish to live under the rule of law, a condition in which judges interpret, prosecutors and police enforce, and elected politicians make the laws applicable to all.

Listening to the now former prime minister over recent days, I was struck by how much like Kalousek he had become, in substance if not in style. Nečas's statements were excessively self-referential given the earthquake that is now shaking this country -as if he mattered. To challenge the credibility of his own law enforcement agencies was reckless. His resignation was inevitable.

And as for Kalousek, he has long thought of himself as inseparable from the state itself. If Nečas played Alice, Kalousek has always been Humpty Dumpty.

"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' "
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

This is not the first time Humpty Dumpty has publicly and vociferously sought to undermine the state prosecutor and police. How many times has he done so in private? Recall his desperate interventions a year ago on behalf of the former defence minister Vlasta Parkanová, his own 'Nagyová' moment. The police, he warned, were threatening democracy.

When interpreting Kalousek's public reaction to Nečas's troubles, it would be wise not to overlook his past abusive behaviour towards the police (see here). And to repeat to yourself his very words, that as finance minister and the so-called 'guarantor' of the way laws are interpreted, he will issue an interpretive guide to state prosecutors, and will say, "In the name of the Republic, these paragraphs must be interpreted in the following way" ("Vydám výkladový sborník a poskytnu ho složkám státu včetně státního zastupitelství a řeknu: "Jménem republiky, ty paragrafy se musejí vykládat takto a takto.")

It took just one day for the state prosecutor to end the theatrical disputes between Petr Nečas and Miroslav Kalousek, and to push them publicly to support each other in the face of this novel threat -equality before the law even for government ministers.

Law has touched power at last. Law is undermining the feeling of impunity that power engenders and on which power feeds. It is a joy to witness.