"She is still important for our future because it is only because of her that our country is getting international attention. The Myanmar issue would be forgotten if not for her and her Nobel Peace Prize," said a retired civil servant, 68-year-old Win Myint, in Yangon.
Respect for Suu Kyi and silent support for her goals still appear widespread in Myanmar, but some have given up hope that she can bring about change in face of an entrenched, ruthless military.
Others believe she is a spent force, noting that democracy hasn't advanced an inch since the daughter of independence hero Aung San arrived on the scene to lead a popular uprising in 1988, which the military brutally crushed. Two years later, her party swept to victory in general elections, but rather than recognizing the results the junta set about imprisoning her followers while the detained Suu Kyi advocated dialogue and a Gandhi-like resistance to her oppressors.
"Aung San Suu Kyi turns the other cheek, meditates and patiently waits for the generals to find the decency to honor the 1990 elections. But this strategy has accomplished nothing and ruined the lives of many of her followers," says Myint Thein, a US-based adviser to exiled resistance groups. "When you have exhausted all peaceful options you have to fight."
David Steinberg, a Myanmar expert at Georgetown University in Washington, describes Suu Kyi as "the icon, the Joan of Arc," but adds that, dangerously, she's become too much of a one-person show, with her close entourage in their late 70s and 80s and the NLD unwilling or unable to make decisions without her.
"I think she is still a force within Burma but she's not an institutional force. Basically she's a personal force. The military have emasculated the NLD," he says.
Steinberg speculates that the generals won't release her until after the already years-long drafting of a constitution and a referendum on it are completed for fear she would disrupt the military stage-managed process.
The "Suu Kyi at 60" organizers are more optimistic.
"We're hoping that this will be the start of a new global push for change in Burma and to apply pressure on the regime," Farmaner says. "It's time the international community took this issue more seriously."
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