Convention. They all lead to the unavoidable conclusion that compliance with the rule of prior exhaustion of domestic remedies should take place at the time the petition is lodged with the Commission, also including the State’s observations in its reply to the case file forwarded to it. This was not considered in the judgment, which to the contrary, denied the State’s objection that the applicant had failed to comply with the rule because it was not verified that the requirement had been fulfilled at the time the admissibility decision on the petition was made. Thus, the judgment breaches this provision of the Convention and the associated operating rules. Moreover, the background information examined above reveals that the decision to be made on the preliminary objection regarding this rule was to determine whether or not the remedies had been exhausted in keeping with the provisions of Article 46(1)(a) of the Convention, as the petition requested. Despite what the judgment claims, it was not a question of whether it was permissible to apply the exception stipulated in numeral 46(2)(c). As a result, the case clearly entails an error ultra petita. In the third place, this writer disagrees with the judgment because in practice, it inexplicably reverses the stipulations of Article 46, applying as a general rule the exceptions given in subparagraph 46(2)(c) and taking as an exception the general rule given in 46(1)(a). The writer further disagrees with the judgment because it adopts a standard that sets aside the “reinforcing or complementing” nature of the overall inter-American system of human rights and instead encourages the simultaneous adjudication of a case by both the domestic jurisdiction and the inter-American jurisdiction, without having previously exhausted the remedies available in the former. Proceeding in this way not only strips all content from the rule on prior exhaustion of domestic remedies and makes it inapplicable, but is also inconsistent with the analysis given in the judgment, that the “Court must preserve a fair balance between the protection of human rights, which is the ultimate purpose of the inter-American system, and the legal certainty and procedural equity that will safeguard the stability and reliability of international protection.”48 This writer therefore shares the sentiments that the Court itself has expressed in the past, that “the tolerance of ‘evident violations of the procedural rules established in the Convention (and, it should be added, in the Court’s and the Commission’s Rules), would entail the loss of the essential authority and credibility of the organs responsible for administering the system of human rights protection”49. These are the very rules that guarantee the Court’s impartiality and independence when it imparts justice in matters of human rights. 48 Para. 37 of the judgment. Case of Díaz Peña v. Venezuela, judgment of June 26, 2012 (Preliminary Objection, Merits, Reparations and Costs), para. 43. 49 18