Can DFT be considered an ab initio method?

Note added afterwards: This question also has excellent answers on the Chemistry Stack Exchange: Is density functional theory an ab initio method?

I have very little experience with DFT, but coming from more of a coupled-cluster background, where the improvements are "systematic", to me it seems that the choice of functional in DFT is somewhat trial-and-error based and also problem specific, perhaps requiring "chemical intuition". Therefore, can DFT truly be considered an ab initio method?