section_path: Government and politics/Parties and elections
section_name: Parties and elections
paragraph_text: Parties and elections
  
  Since 1999, Indonesia has operated under a multi-party system, wherein no single political party has secured an outright majority of seats in the legislative elections. Political parties are generally classified into two categories: secular and nationalist parties, which include the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the Party of the Functional Groups (Golkar), and the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra Party); and Islamic parties, such as the centrist National Awakening Party (PKB) and the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party (PKS). Indonesia's political spectrum is characterised by a preference for pragmatism over ideological orthodoxy to fit the prevailing political climate, and by what are called cartel parties, with extensive power-sharing among parties and limited accountability to voters. Unlike many other democracies, pre-election party alliances are the norm in Indonesia.
  
  In 1955, the first general election was held to elect members of the DPR and the Constitutional Assembly (Konstituante). The most recent elections in 2024 brought eight political parties to the DPR, with a parliamentary threshold of 4% of the national vote. At the national level, Indonesians did not elect a President until 2004. Since then, the President has been elected for a five-year term, as are the party-aligned members of the DPR and the non-partisan DPD. Beginning with the 2015 local elections, elections for governors and mayors have occurred on the same date. In 2013, the Constitutional Court ruled that legislative and presidential elections would be held simultaneously, starting in 2019.