Ion Rațiu, Romanian journalist and politician (b. 1917)
Ion Rațiu (Romanian pronunciation: [iˈon ˈrat͡sju]; 6 June 1917 – 17 January 2000) was a Romanian lawyer, diplomat, journalist, businessman, writer, and politician as well as the official presidential candidate of the Christian Democratic National Peasants' Party (PNȚ-CD) in the 1990 presidential election in which he subsequently ranked third, behind the neo-Communist Ion Iliescu of the National Salvation Front (FSN) and Radu Câmpeanu of the National Liberal Party (PNL), with only 4.29% of the vote.

Subsequently, on more than one occasion, he was named by major newspapers and online publications in Romania as "the best president Romania never had". During his years spent in exile, Rațiu met and discussed with important political figures of the Western world such as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, former American President Jimmy Carter as well as Republican Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole.Although he wasn't the winner of the 1990 Romanian presidential election, Ion Rațiu successfully managed to remain in a significant part of the Romanian collective mindset as one of the most influential politicians of the 1990s, being admired and publicly revered by generations of subsequent Romanian politicians, some of whom had previously claimed to have even voted for him back in 1990, most notably, at least reportedly according to one of his books, the 5th and current President of Romania, Klaus Werner Iohannis.