Setrakian uses friendly ‘interview’ on ArmTV to justify Melkonian closure

AGBU President Berge Setrakian, clearly upset by the negative turn of events in Cyprus criticizing the closure of the Melkonian, and the bad publicity in Friday morning’s Yerevan press, recruited the services of a ‘friendly’ interview on Armenia TV (H1) on Good Friday to air his views and justify the decision.
The well-orchestrated ‘interview’ focused on all aspects of diaspora issues, ethnic identity and the past and present of the AGBU, praising at all times the benefactors of the AGBU Central Board (including Setrakian’s boss and father-in-law), as if they had applied for sainthood.
The AGBU President, with the evident lack of Armenian education that is offered only at the Melkonian, even found time to mention his favourite “azkah-bah-bah-noom” just once, but the more exciting “globalisation” five times in one breath. Unfortunately, many of his own sayings about the good work of the AGBU contradicted the decision to close the Melkonian.
However, waiting for the pre-arranged question, Setrakian used a third of the near 90-minute ‘interview’ to argue the CB decision to close the Melkonian, where he started with a scathing attack against Haygachen Ouzounian and the article that first appeared last year with the headline ‘Melkonian is not for sale’. He did not mention that the article preceding Haygachen’s ‘unsubstantiated’ argument was by his own puppy-dog Dorian in the first place.
The pathetic arguments even included blaming the internet and the e-mail employed by the Alumni camp, suggesting that time and money should not be wasted in court battles, praising the impeccable work of the school’s principal and board (oh, and by the way, he remembered to mention the teachers too!), but the that fault was of the ‘circumstances’.
Not wasting any time or valuable space here, we shall not deal with many of the petty arguments. Instead, here are the main points:
 

•  The Melkonian closure is NOT a financial issue;
  
  A day school will be kept (elsewhere) with the Melkonian name remembered;
  A brand new campus will be built in a Yerevan neighbourhood where 18-25 year-olds (200 in all) will come from the Diaspora to learn about Armenia and establish new bonds, 8 to 12 weeks at a time;
  A summer camp may be established in Karabagh;
  The Alumni are wrong to plead to the Cyprus government to intervene to lower the value of the Melkonian property;
  Lebanon’s student contribution dropped from 90 to just 14;
  The school has not produced editors and cultural leaders since the 1960s;
  Students from Armenia need not go to the Melkonian to discover their ethnic roots;
  Students from Armenia should not go on to the ‘West’, as has been the case of some in the past;
  Students from Lebanon do not speak Bulgarian, and students from Romania do not speak Arabic, hence they cannot communicate with each other;
  The AGBU has not terminated ANY programme in the Diaspora, nor has it cut any funding;
  Organisations have a starting date, and an expiry date, and those without Armenian vision should not even be around (after a question about the Gulbenkian Foundation);
  The Alumni have resorted to tarnishing the unblemished reputation of the AGBU CB members;
  The Alumni called me a Turk and traitor.