CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE A. A. CANÇADO TRINDADE 1. I concur with the Court’s decision to reject the preliminary objections raised by the respondent Government, to proceed with the consideration of the present case, and to postpone its decision on the costs until such time as it renders judgement on the merits. Yet I am bound to append this Concurring Opinion in order to explain, and to expand on, the reasons why I fully agree with the Court’s dismissal of one of the preliminary objections in particular, namely, that of nonexhaustion of local remedies, and the approach I take on the question on nonexhaustion in relation to the issue of the internal structure of the international jurisdictional body (that is, of the attribution of competences to the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights). 2. I wish to consider the particular issue of the objection of non-exhaustion of local remedies raised before the Court, in two circumstances: when, as in the present case, it has not been raised first before the Commission, and when it has duly been raised earlier before the Commission. In the first instance, it can hardly be doubted that the respondent Government is estopped from relying on the objection of non-exhaustion before the Court as it had not been raised first before the Commission(1) The Court, it may be recalled, has deemed the objection of nonexhaustion waivable, even tacitly, and the question of compliance or not with the admissibility requirements before the Commission (Articles 46-47) one which related to the interpretation or application of the American Convention and as such falling ratione materiæ within the scope of the Court’s jurisdiction. However, as it was a requirement of admissibility of an application before the Commission, it held, “In the Matter of Viviana Gallardo et al.” (1981, §§ 26-27), that it was for the Commission in the first place to pass on the matter, and only thereafter could the Court accept or reject the Commission’s views; as in that case the issue had not been dealt with by the Commission, the Court found that it could not at that stage pronounce on the waiver by the Government of the requirement of prior exhaustion of local remedies. 3. It is, in fact, a requirement of common sense, of the proper administration of justice and of juridical stability, and one which ensues from the general economy itself of the American Convention, that an objection to admissibility on the ground of non-exhaustion of local remedies is to be raised only in limine litis, to the extent that the circumstances of the case so permit. If that objection, which benefits primarily the respondent State, is not raised by this latter at the appropriate time, that is, in the proceedings on admissibility before the Commission, there comes into operation a presumption of waiver -albeit tacit- of that objection by the respondent Government. There is nothing to prevent a respondent Government from waiving expressly or tacitly- the benefit of the local remedies rule, which purports to privilege its own national legal order. It follows that if such a waiver had taken place, as in the present case, in the course of proceedings before the Commission, it could hardly be conceived that the respondent Government would be entitled to withdraw the waiver at will, in subsequent proceedings before the Court. Such an (1) Cf. to this effect the established case-law of the European Court of Human Rights (Judgments, inter alia, in the cases: Artico, 1980; Corigliano, 1982; De Jong, Baljet and Van der Brink, 1984; Bozano, 1986; Bricmont, 1989; Ciulla, 1989; Granger, 1990).