Pantelimon "Pan" Halippa was a Bessarabian and later Romanian journalist and politician. One of the most important promoters of Romanian nationalism in Bessarabia and of this province's union with Romania, he was president of Sfatul Țării, which voted union in 1918. He then occupied ministerial posts in several governments, following which he underwent political persecution at the hands of the Communist régime and was later incarcerated in Sighet prison.

Sfatul Țării was a council of political, public, cultural, and professional organizations in the Governorate of Bessarabia in Tsarist Russia. This became a legislative body established the Moldavian Democratic Republic as part of the Russian Federative Republic in December 1917. and then union with Romania in April [O.S. March] 1918.