Limits are the very stuff of a real democracy — a representative, constitutional republican democracy. Even in the structure of a democratic government there must be checks and balances among its three main limbs: the executive, the legislative and the judiciary.
No one among them can usurp the exclusive powers of any of the others. On the day the executive assumes the power to make laws or to interpret them, on that day democracy dies. Indonesia itself witnessed this not many years ago. Democracy is not a happy-go-lucky breaking of handcuffs. It is neither party nor picnic nor feast. It is serious business. It is about obligations to others. It is about authority and its limits. It is about rights and freedoms and their limits.
And vox populi is not vox dei. Democracy is not people power. Democracy is the social discipline that makes freedom meaningful and a true blessing: “the wise restraints that make men free.”