HAMILTON (Reuters):

Bermuda's new premier could call an election within the next few weeks or months in the wealthy British island to take advantage of turmoil in the opposition party over allegations of internal racism.

Premier Ewart Brown of the ruling Progressive Labour Party (PLP) has to call an election by the end of 2008, but could take advantage of disarray in the opposition United Bermuda Party (UBP) by holding a ballot much earlier.

The UBP, which once held unassailable sway over the predominantly black British dependency, was rocked when its black chairwoman, Gwyneth Rawlins, stepped down last Wednesday to protest alleged manipulation and control of the party by Bermuda's white elite.

Her resignation came just over a week after black legislator Jamahl Simmons also abandoned the UBP, saying a racist clique was trying to remove him from his Hamilton seat.

Stuck in the colonial past

He said the party was stuck in the colonial past and was a forum where whites "can engage in threats, intimidation and economic terrorism against blacks with impunity."

The UBP drew support from just 25 per cent of likely voters in a November opinion poll while the PLP stood at nearly 40 per cent.

The PLP won re-election in 2003 in a campaign that saw Brown warn Bermudians they risked voting their way "back on to the plantation" if they supported the UBP.

UBP party leader Wayne Furbert said the latest racism claims rang hollow, given that the anti-Simmons faction had been trying to replace him with another black. And a slew of black UBP politicians has also denied the allegations.

But the split led Maxwell Burgess, the UBP's elder statesman, to call on Furbert to resign, saying the party was divided and ailing. Some former supporters have called for the UBP to disband.

Race has long been an abiding factor in elections in the mid-Atlantic island nation of 63,000 people, home to some of the world's largest reinsurance firms.

The minority white population has voted almost exclusively for the UBP, which ran Bermuda for 30 years after the vote was given to all citizens, leading to charges it was nothing but a vehicle for whites to extend the control of the economy that they had had since the island was settled in the 1600s.