Ion Rațiu

Ion Rațiu (Romanian pronunciation: [iˈon ˈrat͡sju]; 6 June 1917 – 17 January 2000) was a Romanian politician and the presidential candidate of the Christian Democratic National Peasants' Party (PNȚ) in the 1990 elections, in which he ranked third with 4.29% of the vote.

Born in Torda, Torda-Aranyos County, Austria-Hungary, Ioan Rațiu was the son of Dr. Augustin Rațiu, and a great-grandson of Dr. Ioan Rațiu, the leader of the Transylvanian Memorandum. His grandmother Eugenia Turcu was the daughter of Romanian activist and journalist Ion Codru-Drăgușanu. He attended school in Turda and Cluj, and in 1938 he earned a law degree from King Ferdinand I University in Cluj. In 1940, Rațiu was named Counsellor at the Romanian Legation in London, under Minister Viorel V. Tilea. In September 1940, King Carol II fled Romania and this led to the formation of the National Legionary State. As a result, Rațiu resigned from the Foreign Service, and requested political asylum in the United Kingdom. In 1943, Rațiu earned an economics degree from the University of Cambridge. In 1945, Rațiu married Elisabeth Pilkington, the daughter of colonel Guy Pilkington; the couple had two children, Indrei and Nicolae.

Rațiu remained in exile in London after the communists came to power in Romania in 1947. Even from the beginning of World War II, he joined the fight against totalitarianism of any political color, helping to organize the Central European Student and Youth Society.

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