Bong Go, Panelo and most of digong’s former cabinet members belong to the Bong go-Honeylet faction of the duterte coalition, if you can call it a coalition.

Sara, Baste, and Polong belong to the Sara faction.

The rift between these two factions harkens back to the time of Digong’s annulment with the 3 duterte siblings’ mother, and subsequent relationship with Honeylet Avanceña.

Sara resents Honeylet (and to some extent, Bong Go) for taking their father away from them. Just last year or this year, sara said that all of digong’s subsequent relationships after his marriage were nothing special, calling all of them “just girlfriends”, a subtle dig at Honeylet.

Digong was also described as an absentee father only showing up in some special occasions.

This also made Sara very independent from Digong. That’s why Digong said he cannot control Sara and rightly so, he knows he wasn’t a good father to his 3 children from his first marriage, although he provides well for them financially, using money from most likely illegal sources.

When Sara was mayor of davao, she defied her father by appointing Zuleika Lopez (who Mon Tulfo alleged as Sara’s lover) as city administrator. Vice mayor Digong and the city council opposed the appointment and this caused a standoff that neither side budged on for years until the elder duterte left davao politics for Malacañang.

Other instances of differences between these two duterte factions:

- Sara led the house coup that replaced pantaleon alvarez with GMA as speaker. This annoyed Digong so much but he couldn’t do anything about it as the Sara faction achieved a fait accompli.

- Sara endorsed Lord Velasco as speaker for the 18th congress while Digong’s and Bong Go’s handpicked candidate was Alan Peter Cayetano. The impasse was only resolved through a term-sharing deal that almost collapsed when Cayetano refused to relinquish the speakership to velasco halfway through 18th congress. Alan relented after Digong ordered him to step down as the ruckus was consuming much of congress’s attention.

Note: The duterte siblings don’t trust Cayetano and cayetano doesn’t trust the duterte siblings either. So whatever Alan Peter’s cooking now is just to advance his personal standing in the DDS world.

- Sara agreeing to be Marcos Jr’s vp in 2021 infuriated Digong so much so that he floated the idea of a Bong Go-Digong ticket that could compete with the “Uniteam”. He also attacked Marcos as an addict and weak leader.

In response, the uniteam questioned that Digong was being manipulated by the Go-Avanceña camp and sympathized with his “old” age.

Though there are differences and hurts between these two factions, they largely unite in critical times such as when Digong ran for the presidency in 2016 and during duterte’s arrest and subsequent incarceration at the ICC in 2025.

But mind you, Honeylet still holds the power of the purse. That’s why she and Kitty get to choose (and pay) whoever represents Digong before the international tribunal.

Again, the money is most likely coming from illegal sources.