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AKARTA: Vice President Jusuf Kalla said Saturday that it would take a courageous "thug" who dared to face risks to lead the country to a better future.

If everybody acted like a bureaucrat, he said, Indonesia would never improve.

"Without someone willing to take risks, nothing will happen. When will this country improve? When can our industries advance?" he said as quoted by tempointeraktif.com.

What he actually meant by the word thug, preman in Indonesian, is actually a mispronunciation of "free man".

"Preman means free man, an entrepreneur. Not a government official," Kalla said at the national meeting of youth organization Pemuda Pancasila in Pondok Gede, East Jakarta.

Kalla, chairman of the Golkar Party, recently announced his readiness to become a candidate in the upcoming presidential election, which would see him compete directly against his boss, incumbet President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The youth organization is known to have a strong allegiance to the Golkar Party, and served as a Soeharto-backed thug club during the New Order era.

Kalla said the country needed more entrepreneurs to move forward and develop.