It certainly doesn't smell good.  On the other hand, they were running in a campaign where the other parties were receiving very big bucks from companies and unions, and they had to be competitive in order to have any chance of gaining power and then changing the rules.

It's a tough call.  Would they rather be completely pure and in the wilderness forever?  Have they started down a slippery ethical slope?  IMO they did the right thing.  You can't be in a game and complain that the rules are wrong, so we're going to play the game the way we think the rules should be, while everyone else is playing by the established rules.  That would be self-defeating from the outset.