The exact wrong thing to do (in fact, an incredibly stupid thing to do) would be to abandon the party altogether, and split up into five separate parties with five separate leaders. The only thing that could be less productive would be to almost instantly announce that because the newly formed parties have common interests, they would work together in a loose confederation to unseat the majority, begging the question of why they split in the first place. The largest Japanese minority party, Shinshinto ("New Frontier Party"), has done exactly that, tossing the Japanese Diet into a flurry of confusion that will only serve to strengthen the ruling coalition led by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
Briefly, here is a rundown of a hectic two weeks. Shinshinto, formerly the largest opposition party, ran an opposition to the LDP strong enough that the LDP was forced to form a coalition with two other mid-size parties, and thus move a bit to the political center to pacify their more liberal coalition partners.
But Shinshinto, run by the outspoken Ichiro Ozawa, fell apart after the last party election, in which Ozawa won, to the great dismay of some rather powerful Shinshinto politicians. These folks (including two former Prime Ministers) decided they were fed up with Ozawa's strong-arm, uncompromising leadership, and left Shinshinto, taking their loyal supporters to form their own parties. Five parties, in fact, each without a single distinguishing characteristic.
The new parties are the Democratic Reform Party (led by Sadako Sasano), Taiyo Party (led by former PM Tsutomu Hata), From Five (led by another former PM, Morihiro Hosokawa), Shinto Yuai ("New Party Fraternity," led by Kansei Nakano), and Kokumin no Koe ("Voice of the People," led by Michiko Kano). In an indication of the haste of the changes made last week, this last party was originally given the official English name "Voice of People," and it made placards bearing that label, until a certain native English speaker told Kano that he was missing an article. The official English name has since been changed to reflect proper grammar.
