No- it's not.
I don't really understand your point of view. He was asked TWICE "are you declaring an emergency?" to which he replied "I don't have fuel to hold".
According to you, what should happen at this point? It seems from your posts that you are saying that at this point, ATC should take operational control from the captain and send him to his diversion field? Please read the transcript, accident report etc. from the Avianca accident.
Maybe "I don't have fuel to hold" means he still has 50mins in the tanks.
Maybe "I don't have fuel to hold" means he is on vapour.
Maybe "I don't have fuel to hold" means he finds himself in a sticky situation by not having enough fuel for any delay, but without having the balls to declare an emergency, and that if he waffles on the frequency for long enough, ATC will step up and declare for him, so he is off the hook.
I guarantee that if ATC have to declare on his behalf, he will be having tea and biccies.
I can also guarantee that if in this situation, he was put in the hold and not given any priority and ploughed in due fuel starvation, not only would a lot of unnecessary deaths occur, but some ATC type would be in a world of hurt.
Declaring on his behalf is not making a decision for him; it's taking an unsafe, ambiguous situation and making it safe. It's quite possible that he was trying to declare the Italian equivalent of "minimum fuel" or "pan" or "get me down now". He didn't interrupt the emergency process once it was started- which would indicate to me that he was happy for it to proceed. If he thought it was a clever way to jump the queue- he has another thing coming.